WATER-BIRD WAIFS 



and up giant trees. But we may now and then run 

 across a solitary Great Blue by the edge of some 

 body of water or feeding in a morass. They are 

 among the wariest of birds, and will not allow a 

 person to come anywhere near them not if they 

 know it. 



Another well-known Northern heron, famous for its 

 great nesting-colonies, is the Black-crowned Night 

 Heron, familiarly called Quawk. On the seacoast 

 they are more common than in the interior, in which 

 latter region they are very locally distributed. In the 

 locality where I now live they are seldom seen, except 

 in migration, when I sometimes hear the harsh "quak, 

 quak," as one flies over in the evening, high in air. 

 I have often been into their rookeries in lonely swamps 

 where from a dozen to thousands of pairs had built 

 their rude nests, sometimes half a dozen or more in one 

 tree. Everything there is nasty and ill-smelling. One 

 of my earliest recollections of herons is of climbing to 

 one of these nests, in a small colony in a cedar swamp, 

 and having the young, according to their habit, vomit 

 out partly digested fish from their crops into my face 

 as I climbed. This bird is of good size, the adults 

 quite light in color, but the immature birds are of a 

 dull mottled brown. 



The American Bittern, Stake-driver, or Post-driver, 



as it is variously called, is of about the same size, and 



somewhat resembles the young of the preceding, only 



the brown is of a darker, richer shade, and the adult 



260 



