CATALOGUE OF CANADIAN BIRDS. 131 
almost deafening and the odour arising from the filth with which 
the trees and ground were covered was extremely disagreeable. 
We tramped all through the heronry and calculated that it must 
extend about half a mile in each direction. The nests were all 
of the same pattern, great cumbersome piles of sticks, about a 
foot thick, with but a very shallow cavity and no lining.” 
The heronry on Riding Mountain, Man., is thus descr:bed by Mr. 
E. Seton-Thompson :— 
“We hadstruck a heronry ; hundreds of these birds were passing 
toand fro, and, on going forward a hundred yards or sc, we found 
the tops of the poplars covered with their nests, the young birds, 
full grown but not able to fly, perched on the highest trees. The 
nests were made of the small dead branches of the poplar and 
were placed as near the tops of the trees as possible. 
“These mountains are full of small ponds and deep marshes 
which swarm with lizards and small fish, on which the herons feed. 
On getting to an open space near the heronry we could see the old 
birds coming and going in every direction. Those coming home 
were stuffed to the bill with food for their young, making them 
present a very ungainly figure, as they lazily flapped their way 
towards the woods.” 
A few years ago this species bred in the township of Escott, 
Ont., and some of the old nests were still left in 1895. In the next 
township—Yonge—a few birds still breed near MacIntosh Mills, 
and their nests may be noticed on some tall pine trees. A large 
heronry existed in a bush near the River Tay, Lanark Co., in 1885. 
The nests were built mostly on ash trees, three or four nests often 
in one tree. It still breeds in the township of Elizabethtown, 
where there is a large heronry near Graham Lake. Two sets of 
eggs, five of each, were taken from this heronry on May 6th, 1899. 
(Rev. C. J. Young.) 
In Muskoka, Ont., they build in tall pine trees. One tree on 
an island in alake about twelve miles from Bracebridge had 
between fifteen and twenty nests init. They used to breed in 
Muskoka in great numbers, but have been driven farther back 
and are rather scarce now. I have known one to sit upon a heap 
of floating mud in a small lake, for thirty-six hours, catching fish, 
They upon frogs and fish. At Crane Lake, Assiniboia, I 
972 
