WADING BIRDS 97 



This bird is found from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 

 breeding in colonies north of the Ohio River, throughout 

 the Great Lakes region, and the Canadian provinces. It 

 winters from ^liddle States southward to northern Soutli 

 America. River bottoms and tamarack swamps are resorted 

 to inmiediately upon their an-ival from the South in April. 

 The birds travel great distances to fish, usually singly. 

 Unlike the bitterns, lierons do not stand motionless waiting 

 for their prey to come within reach, but move about in shal- 

 low water, striking with their bill any form of animal life 

 that appears near the surface. 



Their notes are coarse, discordant croaks. This species 

 is not suffering destruction at the hands of the plume 

 hunter, so are still found in great numbers along the river 

 bottoms of the Kankakee and the Illinois. 



Places where they assemble to nest are called " heron- 

 ries." Some huge trees contain as many as fortj' nests, all 

 of which may be occupied at the same time; the ground or 

 shallow water beneath these nesting trees is offensive with 

 decaying fish. 



The trees occupied by the nests usually die after the 

 second or third year, but the nests are used after the trees 

 are dead. The three to five light blue eggs require four 

 weeks' incubation, and the young leave the nest after sixty 

 or seventy days. In some of our treeless sections these birds 

 have adapted themselves to conditions by constructing huge 

 nests on the ground. The writer saw a colony of about two 

 hundred pairs along the Yellowstone River in ^Montana, and 

 several other heronries exist on the barren alkali tracts of 

 California. 



