XX 

 IN A HERON VILLAGE 



OF all the sights and feelings of a bird lover, the most 

 lasting, perhaps, is when he first steps from the 

 quieter wood scenes and suddenly emerges into the very 

 heart of a busy bird town. The eyes pop as wide and the 

 pulse beats as fast as that of a backwoods boy when he 

 first walks into the very midst of a modern three-ringed 

 circus in full swing. 



Fifteen miles below my home in the heart of the fir 

 forest is a village of two hundred houses. It has an area 

 of about three acres. Every home is a sky-scraper. Not 

 a single house is less than a hundred and thirty feet up, and 

 some are a hundred and sixty feet high. The inhabitants 

 are feathered fishers. They hunt the waterways of the 

 Columbia and the Willamette for miles. Each owns his 

 own claim, and there's never a dispute as to possession. 



It takes the biggest reserve of nerve and muscle to 

 reach this village, but one may sit on the wooded hillside 

 far below and watch life there in full swing. From two 

 to five brush-heap houses, the size of a wash-tub, are care- 

 fully balanced and securely fastened in the top limbs of 

 each tree. Gaunt, long-legged citizens stand about the 

 airy doorways and gossip in hoarse croaks. Residents are 

 continually coming and going, some flapping in from the 

 feeding-ground with craws full of fish and frogs, others 



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