440 Bailey, Plum Island Night Herons. Lbct. 



Nesting activities among the birds were at their height by this time, 

 the all important and laborious duties attending the rearing of 

 broods, demanding continual care and attention on the part of the 

 parents. The incessant calls of the ever hungry young, together 

 with the responsive voices of their elders served to make the imme- 

 diate neighborhood a noisy if not melodious place and this in addi- 

 tion to the constant coming and going of the birds to and from 

 their fishing grounds lent an air of business and activity more fully 

 apparent than on any of my previous visits. 



I climbed a slender maple to nests containing four and five 

 young respectively. These thinly clad little fellows did not 

 take kindly to my advances toward a closer acquaintance, but 

 resented any familiarity, with resort to a thoroughly disgusting 

 performance, that of vomiting onto the edge of the nest, their 

 partially digested food of fish and mussels, this was a defensive 

 measure no doubt or a warning to me to keep my distance, and 

 had my sense of smell been at all over sensitive, I probably would 

 have heeded it. 



At another nest that I visited, where the young were older and 

 more fully developed a different means of defence was employed. 

 The largest fellow of the four in the nest, drew himself grandilo- 

 quently up to the proud height of some ten inches and awkwardly 

 spreading his wings, and balancing on rather unsteady legs, made 

 several rapid and quite forceful thrusts with his beak, uttering with 

 each thrust and elongation of his neck a husky squawk, quite worthy 

 of the best attempt of his elders. Such an energetic attempt on 

 the part of so youthful and unstable a bird was extremely amusing 

 to me, an onlooker, but a sufficiently serious matter to the per- 

 former whose eyes kindled with a savage anger and fear each time 

 I moved, near him. 



For one equipped with a small hand camera, carrying a good 

 lens and rapid shutter, opportunities for photographs, showing char- 

 acteristic phases of nest life of these birds, would have been many 

 and varied. As circumstances were, most of the nests being in 

 the deeper shade or the young birds in constant motion, work with 

 ordinary equipment was out of the question. 



Could I have realized that this was the last season that the birds 

 would be nesting here I doubtless would have visited the place 



