BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 89 
ARDEA HERODIAS L. (194.) 
GREAT BLUE HERON. 
Crane island is situated in the upper portion of upper Lake 
Minnetonka, and has received its name from the circumstance 
of its being the breeding and roosting place of the ‘‘ Blue 
Cranes,” as this species is popularly called. How long it has 
been thus occupied is not even traditional, for it was a heronry 
earlier than the Indian traditions began. About the 10th to 
15th of April, and occasionally a little earlier, these birds begin 
to arrive in small parties, at once seeking their old roosting 
place. A steady increase in their numbers continues for about 
a week, when the whole clan seems to have reached the 
heronry, and early in the mornings they may be seen flying far 
away in all directions till all have departed. An hour before 
the sun sets, they begin to return, but it will be some time 
after dark before the last have arrived. They gather into 
clusters, or loose parties in sections to which they resort, after 
having satisfied their hunger, and enter into matrimonial nego 
tiations in which rivalries and jealousies lead to some severe 
contests between the males. By the first week in May all of 
these matters are settled, and the nesting begins from the 5th 
to the 10th of May. The structures consist of sticks, twigs, 
coarse and medium weeds of different kinds, very roughly and 
loosely disposed, with barely depression enough to retain the 
eggs, three to four in number, light bluish green in color, all 
of which is placed in the forks of a tree at about sixty feet ele- 
evation. The island on which the tree stands, at some day in 
the remote past, was evidently densely covered with lofty elms, 
sugar maples, oaks and basswoods, but the excrement accumu- 
lating from year to year, and age to age,, has destroyed them 
until the number left standing has become few and considerably 
scattered. Since that lake has become a great summer resort, 
and is constantly plied with some twenty or thirty steamers of 
various sizes (with whistles loud enough to be heard quite dis- 
tinctly fifteen miles away), three or four times as many full 
sailed yachts, to which may be added two or three hundred 
row-boats, constantly flitting back and forth at all hours of the 
day and far into the nights, it is a standing surprise that these 
birds (and their copartners, the cormorants, whom I had like 
to have forgotten to mention in this connection), still continue 
to return year after year to the same familiar spot. However, 
it must be confessed that from these disturbing causes, to which 
