328 Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Ncience. 
mer and till quite late in the fall. Quite solitary in its habits when feeding, 
rarely ever more than one being seen in one place. In a boat trip from 
Terre Haute up the river as far as Durkee’s Ferry not more than four or 
five would be seen; and in a similar distance down the river no greater” 
number would be encountered. They doubtless nest somewhere in Vigo 
County, but I was never able to learn just where. A specimen obtained by 
Mr. Thomas Frazee near Sullivan in the spring of 1889. 
In Carroll County, during my boyhood days, the “Big Blue Cranes”, as we 
then called them, were quite common. The country lying southwest of our 
house was a dense unbroken forest for a mile or more. Scarcely had it been 
invaded by the pioneer settlers and little timber had been cut in it except 
about the edges. Interspersed through this wood were numerous small 
woodland ponds, some of which became dry in late summer or early fall, 
others remained with more or less water throughout the year. In and 
about these ponds was a heavy growth of cottonwoods (Populus deltoides), 
some of them magnificent trees 100 to 150 feet high and three to five feet 
in diameter. In the tops of these great trees, in one of the largest ponds, 
was a considerable heron roockery:; perhaps there were usually 30 to 50 
pairs nesting there. The most frequented feeding ground of these herons 
was along Wild Cat Creek, about a mile and a half north. During the 
spring and summer scarcely a day passed that we did not see many of these 
great birds flying overhead northward in the morning, evidently on their 
way to their feeding grounds, usually flying in twos or threes, sometimes in 
greater numbers, but perhaps most often singly; then in the evening, some- 
times not until after sunset, they would return. Sometimes they flew quite 
low; I remember distinctly one morning, a neighbor boy fired at one with 
his squirrel rifle and brought it down. It proved to be a female with a 
fully developed egg in the oviduct. 
In the early 70’s much of this land was ditched and cleared, which caused 
the herons to abandon that rookery. 
Probably the largest heronry that ever existed in Carroll County was in 
what was known as the Maple Swamp in the southern part of the county 
between Sedalia and Cutler, near Lexington, about six miles south of Wild 
Cat Creek, or eighteen miles from the Wabash River to the northwest. This 
swamp really consisted of a widening of a small creek known as Middle 
Fork. It covered several hundred acres and the lower portion had a heavy 
growth of swamp ash (Fraxvinus nigra) and soft maple (Acer saccharin- 
um): and in the tops of these trees a considerable colony of Great Blue 
Herons had their nests. My first visit to this heronry was on June 12, 1882, 
when I counted more than one hundred nests, most of them being occupied. 
As many as thirteen nests were seen in one tree, and several other trees con- 
tained from three to ten nests each. Most of the nests contained large 
young, some nearly able to fly. I again visited this swamp on May 21, of 
the next year. Climbing to several nests I found young birds in some and 
eggs in various stages of incubation in others. I was told by farmers living 
near by that formerly there were many more nests but the birds were so 
harassed and molested by squirrel hunters and others who annoyed them 
needlessly that they were being gradually driven away. In the three winters 
from 1883 to 1885, I had occasion to drive by this swamp several times. The 
leaves having fallen, the nests showed plainly in the tops of the bare trees 
and made a striking and very interesting sight. 
