228 American Birds 



to form into small portions and come up as the cud of a 

 cow does, and each youngster pitched into the meal with 

 a vigor and energy that would have amazed a litter of 

 young pigs. 



When you climb anywhere near a nest after the young 

 birds have had a good meal, they will begin to " unswal- 

 low " as fast as they have gobbled it down. On account 

 of this habit, especially common among night herons, we 

 found it always safe to keep out of the way as much as 

 possible, or at least not approach a nest full of young 

 birds from below. 



In order to study the life of the herons and get some 

 pictures early in the morning before the wind sprung up 

 so strong that we could hardly hold ourselves in the tree- 

 top, which it had a habit of doing at that season of the 

 year, we camped at the heronry all one night. At the 

 south end of the heron jungle is a hay-field, where we took 

 up our quarters. We had no trouble in keeping awake 

 most of the night to study heron habits. The blue herons 

 as well as the squawks, or night herons, seemed to keep 

 busy most of the night. As some one has said, it sounded 

 as if several hundred Indians were trying to throttle each 

 other. Then the mosquitoes and frogs were more active 

 after dark. We crawled into a haycock and covered our- 

 selves up, as much to get rid of bloodthirsty insects as 

 to keep warm. At daylight we felt as much comfort in 

 crawling out to get rid of burrs and stickers as we had the 

 night before in crawling in to get away from mosquitoes. 



A young night heron is well adapted to climbing from 

 limb to limb by reason of his long angling toes and the 

 ability to hook his neck or bill over a limb and draw him- 



