92 WADING BIRDS. 



States, but is wholly unknown in the high boreal regions of 

 the continent. In the winter it proceeds as far south as the 

 tropics, having been seen in the marshes of Cayenne, and their 

 breeding-stations are known to extend from New Orleans to 

 Massachusetts. It arrives in Pennsylvania early in the month 

 of April, and soon takes possession of its ancient nurseries, 

 which are usually (in the Middle and Southern States) the 

 most solitary and deeply shaded part of a cedar-swamp, or 

 some inundated and almost inaccessible grove of swamp-oaks. 

 In these places, or some contiguous part of the forest, near a 

 pond or stream, the timorous and watchful flock pass away the 

 day until the commencement of twilight, when the calls of 

 hunger and the coolness of evening arouse the dozing throng 

 into life and activity. At this time, high in the air, the parent 

 birds are seen sallying forth towards the neighboring marshes 

 and strand of the sea in quest of food for themselves and 

 their young ; as they thus proceed in a marshalled rank at 

 intervals they utter a sort of recognition call, like the guttural 

 sound of the syllable ^kwah, uttered in so hollow and sepulchral 

 a tone as almost to resemble the retchings of a vomiting person. 

 These venerable eyries of the Kwah Birds have been occupied 

 from the remotest period of time by about eighty to a hundred 

 pairs. When their ancient trees were levelled by the axe, they 

 have been known to remove merely to some other quarter of 

 the same swamp ; and it is only when they have been long 

 teased and plundered that they are ever known to abandon 

 their ancient stations. Their greatest natural enemy is the 

 Crow ; and according to the relation of Wilson, one of these 

 heronries, near Thompson's Point, on the banks of the Dela- 

 ware, was at length entirely abandoned through the persecu- 

 tion of these sable enemies. Several breeding-haunts of the 

 Kwah Birds occur among the red-cedar groves on the sea- 

 beach of Cape May ; in these places they also admit the associa- 

 tion of the Little Egret, the Green Bittern, and the Blue Heron. 

 In a very secluded and marshy island in Fresh Pond, near Bos- 

 ton, there likewise exists one of these ancient heronries ; and 

 though the birds have been frequently robbed of their eggs in 



