42 NORTH AMERICAN HERONS AND THEIR ALLIES. 



Mississippi Valley. The nests were usually placed on large trees 

 growing in water, and hence the colonies were restricted to the 

 heavy swamps near the coast or to the bottom lands of the larger 

 rivers inland. The birds nested commonly north along the Atlantic 

 coast to Charleston, S. C. (Audubon). They undoubtedly nested in 

 some of the many favorable localities on the coasts of North Caro- 

 lina and Virginia, where actual records are very few, and thence 

 north to southern New Jersey, where in Wilson's time a small colony 

 bred near Cape May. The egret once nested in Arlington Cemetery, 

 Virginia, near Washington, D. C. (Wm. Palmer). 



The bottom lands of the Mississippi River and its larger tribu- 

 taries furnished an abundance of suitable nesting sites, and here 

 were the largest colonies outside of Florida. As man} 7 as a thousand 

 birds have been seen in a single colony in Daviess County, Ind. So 

 generally distributed were these herons in Indiana that they have 

 been known to nest in Knox, Gibson, Daviess, Dekalb, Steuben, 

 Noble, Jasper, Porter, Lake, and Starke Counties. The southern 

 third of Indiana marked the northern limit of the larger breeding 

 colonies, but smaller colonies nested north to northern Indiana and 

 even two-thirds of the way up the western shore of Lake Michi- 

 gan to Two Rivers, Wis. (Kumlein and Hollister). The egret also 

 nested as far north as Grand Ridge, 111. (Soule) ; Canton, 111. (Cob- 

 leigh) ; Lincoln County, Mo. (Widmann) ; and Texarkana, Tex. 

 (Oberholser). 



The Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain region offered little 

 inducement to the egret, and it seems to have been absent during the 

 breeding season from the whole of this great area except that a few 

 nested near Great Salt Lake, Utah (Ridgway). A few small colo- 

 nies existed in Calif ornia, at Buena Vista Lake (Linton) ; Summit 

 Lake (Goldman) ; and Sacramento (Ridgway) ; also in the Truckee 

 Valley, Nev. (Ridgway) ; and north to Malheur Lake, Oreg. (Bend- 

 ire), which was formerly the home of probably the largest colony 

 on the Pacific slope. Here, contrary to their habit in most parts of 

 their range, the birds were necessarily forced to nest among the reeds. 



South of the United States the former breeding range of the 

 egret seems to have included all of Central America and the whole 

 of South America south to Port Otway, Patagonia (Sclater and 

 Salvin). It is to be understood, of course, that the species was 

 very local throughout this whole region, being restricted to the few 

 places favorable for nesting sites situated principally on the coasts, 

 the larger lakes, and the borders of the lower parts of the larger 

 rivers, especially the Parana, the Paraguay, and the upper Orinoco. 

 The egret nested on the four large islands of the Greater An- 

 tilles, but seems to have been rare in the West Indies east of 



