voi.xxvin 



1910 



J Cole, The Tagging of Wild Birds. 161 



it is interesting to note the vicissitudes of these young Herons; 

 the mortality rate among them must be very high, that such a 

 considerable number should fall into man's hands. It further 

 illustrates that the average man with a gun is not at all particular 

 as to what he shoots, since few birds are safe that fly within range, 

 and the young*and inexperienced Night Herons have to pay a heavy 

 tribute. It may be by this sort of selective elimination, rather than 

 by the actual learning on the part of individuals, that many birds 

 have become so wary of man, and especially of man when he carries 

 a gun. Another noticeable feature is the direction of dispersal of 

 these birds after leaving the rookeries. As will be seen by a glance 

 at the accompanying sketch-map (Fig. 1), the general trend of 

 dispersal was northerly. I suspect, however, that instead of being 

 interpreted as a definite northward migration of these birds, it 

 should be looked upon rather as a scattering of the young in all 

 directions in search of food, which must be relatively difficult to 

 obtain near the rookeries where the parents have been foraging 

 during the breeding season. The reason that this movement 

 appears to be largely northerly in the present instance may be due 

 to the fact that there is no land to the south, dispersal in that direc- 

 tion being therefore precluded. However, the data lead to the 

 conclusion that merely because young birds appear in a certain 

 locality in the autumn, it must not be inferred that they have 

 necessarily come from the north. Mr. Brewster, in his 'Birds of 

 the Cambridge Region,' speaks of the fact that young Night Herons 

 often appeared there in the late summer, and casually suggests that 

 they have come from further north. From what the present records 

 teach us, it seems not at all unlikely that these birds which appeared 

 near Cambridge in the fall may have been reared on Cape Cod. 



In the present connection it will be of interest to compare with 

 those given above the results obtained by Dr. Paul Bartsch with 

 Black-crowned Night Herons which he banded at Washington, 

 D. C, ^ of which work, as has already been stated, the writer was 

 unaware when he made his last report. Dr. Bartsch used a method 

 in all essentials like the one used by us. All his Herons were 



1 Bartsch, Paul. Notes on the Herons of the District of Columbia. Smiths. 

 Miscl. Coll., Vol. XLV., Pub. No. 1419, Quart. Issue, Vol. I, Pts. 1 and 2, pp. 104-111, 

 pis. xxxil-xxxviii. Washington, 1904. 



