DEAD WILLOW BEXD. 129 



All others of our many herons, even the least bittern, 

 love one anotlier's company. They arc always more or 

 less associated when they arrive in April — a few of sev- 

 eral species remain all winter — and for weeks continue 

 to feed in companies. Indeed, this continuance of asso- 

 ciation is more or less noticeable after the breeding sea- 

 son commences. They have often favorite trees in 

 which they roost, and become so partial to them that, if 

 not molested, they will return to them year after year. 

 In the American Naturalist for 1878, Dr. Lockwood 

 has given a most entertaining account of a heronry 

 believed to have been at least fifty years old. Here 

 they not only roosted but nested. It is somewhat dif- 

 ferent here. Night -herons, the blue, great blue, and 

 little green, all associate in clustered elms and maples, 

 and remain apparently upon the best of terms. Per- 

 haps these roosting-places are the combined remnants of 

 separate heronries, in existence before the general de- 

 struction of the forests in this valley. Being the largest 

 of our birds, and still tlie most prominent feature of 

 our avi-fauna, may not heronries along its banks have 

 given rise to the Indian name of the stream, Mechen- 

 tschiholens-sipu (Big Bird Creek)? 



But naught of this applies to the bittern. When the 

 dog -toothed violet begins to bloom in the sheltered 

 nooks and corners of the meadows, then the bitterns ap- 

 pear singly, here and there, and before the first of May, 

 if the air be not too frosty, you may hear from sundown 

 until midnight their weird call from the marshes, j9^^c^•- 

 la-grboh — pxiclc-la-grooh. I have not much patience 

 with any effort to describe the voices of birds by coin- 

 6'^ 



