Widmann — A Preliminary Catalog of the Birds of Missouri. 53 



Territories and Alaska. Breeds locally throughout its range and 

 winters from the Gulf and South Atlantic States and California 

 southward. 



The Blue Crane, as this bird is generally called, is a fairly com- 

 mon summer resident in Missouri from the middle of March, 

 occasionally earlier, to November. It is surprising that a bird 

 so large and subjected to such universal persecution still survives 

 in the numbers in which we find it to-day. During the breeding 

 season there is probably no county in the state where some indi- 

 viduals cannot be seen flying from the distant nest to some fav- 

 orite feeding grounds. Perhaps the largest numbers may be 

 seen in the flood plains of the great rivers, where whole colonies 

 nest on the highest trees along the shores or on the islands; 

 but they are also found in the remotest counties of the Ozarks, 

 where they build their nests in the high trees of the valleys in one 

 county and have their feeding grounds ten or more miles away in 

 another county. 



*196. Herodias egretta (Gmel.). American Egret. 



Ardea- egretta. Herodias alba egretta. White Crane. White Heron. 



Geog. Dist. — Originally whole of South America, Central 

 America, West Indies, and in North America throughout the 

 United States, excepting the mountainous regions of the West, 

 to southern Canada. Now greatly reduced in numbers and rare 

 where formerly common. Breeds now locally from Virginia 

 and Missouri southward and wanders after the breeding season 

 northward. Winters from the Gulf States southward. 



Until the early nineties, when the plume craze reached our 

 country and every trapper became a plume hunter, the swamps 

 of the southeast harbored large colonies with hundreds of breeding 

 Egrets. After a very few years of slaughter the birds had grown 

 so scarce that the good men had to give up hunting cranes as an 

 unprofitable occupation. As late as 1900, small numbers were 

 still breeding in colonies together with Great Blue Herons on 

 islands in the Mississippi as far north as St. Charles and Lincoln 

 Counties, making the shallow lakes in the marshes their feeding 

 grounds, but none have been seen there the last few years. 

 Twenty years ago hundreds congregated around these lakes in 

 August and early September and many ascended the lower Mis- 

 souri Valley on these roving expeditions at least as far as New 

 Haven (Dr. Eimbeck). 



