428 Bailey, Plum Island Night Herons. [oct. 



portion of them were able to fly. It is probable that the birds still 

 in the nests were of a second brood, or their parents had been inter- 

 rupted in their first attempts at nesting. 



Guttural squawks and a ghoulish, uncanny, rasping din greeted 

 me as I stood on the rim of the hollow and looked across the lively 

 scene, voices that the ornithologist Wilson aptly likened to the 

 noise made by several hundred Indians trying to choke each other! 

 Descending into the brushy thickets, I found the place not a clean 

 one to travel about in. Decidedly filthy in the vicinity of the 

 nests, the trees and much of the foliage white with chalkings, and 

 the ground beneath covered with refuse, the stench of which was 

 keenly sensible to the olfactory nerves. 



The nests were very loosely constructed, of coarse dead sticks, 

 without any attempt at lining, apparently only thrown together 

 and looking as if a good breeze would blow them out of the trees 

 altogether. Some of the larger trees contained over a dozen nests 

 each, these varying in situation from 6 to 25 feet above the ground, 

 the ramshackle affairs built in almost every available crotch, often 

 seemingly regardless, of the close proximity of a similar dwelling. 



In moving about amid the tangle that composed the undergrowth 

 of the place I was continually scaring up more birds for by no means 

 had they all taken flight upon my first appearance, though the 

 multitude that left at that time would seem to have emptied it. 

 Sometimes, a dozen or twenty birds, chiefly adults, would take 

 flight at once from a thicker covert, and after much flapping 

 about and noisy, hoarse squawking become silent but sail steadily 

 to and fro high over head, the younger birds taking refuge in the 

 thickets of several nearby hollows among the dunes. 



Some few of the young birds still on the nests, upon being dis- 

 turbed at my approach or attempted investigation, would crawl 

 out and climb clumsily about on the adjacent limbs, gawky, awk- 

 ward, and scarce able to keep the balance requisite for maintain- 

 ing their hold on the slender branches. Emerging on the farther 

 side from any point of entrance, of the circular hollow, the whole 

 area being only about two acres in extent, I caught glimpses of 

 small groups of birds, the young and unsteady' of wing, that had 

 resorted to nearby cover. These callow birds were perched on 

 the plum bushes or moving slowly about on the sand and doubtless 



