IF things ran as smoothly in human cities as they do in the 

 bird cities I have visited, the policeman's calling would 

 become obsolete and there would never be any scandal 

 about graft. 



One of the oldest bird towns in the interior of North 

 America is probably the historic heronry on Crane Island in 

 Lake Minnetonka. So long have the herons nested here that 

 even the traditions of the Sioux Indians do not go back to 

 the time when the great blue herons did not occupy their 

 summer town on Crane Island. It was in the spring of 1908 

 that the bird city of Crane Island passed into history. When, 

 according to an immemorial custom of their race, the herons 

 returned to Minnetonka about the first of April they found 

 the island occupied by a stronger race. Summer cottages 

 had been built all over the island and many of the century old 

 meeting trees had been cut down. There was at first great 

 commotion among the dispossessed owners. The birds sailed 

 and flapped around the tree-tops and talked to each other in 

 a great variety of croaks and grunts, then they settled down 

 to a great conference of thought and meditation, and for sev- 

 eral days stood in long stately rows on the beaches and sand 

 bars near their island. After a few days, as if by a common 

 impulse the whole flock of about two hundred birds moved 

 across a channel about half a mile wide to Dunlap Island and 

 started to build a new town. In August, 1904, a cyclone broke 

 down a good many nest trees on Crane Island and quite a 

 number of the herons had already moved to Dunlap Island in 

 the spring of 1905. On this island, they will not stay very 

 long; within a year or two, encroaching cottagers will compel 

 them to again move their town and will perhaps drive them 

 away from their beloved lake entirely. 







