﻿GREEN HERON ON NEST 



The Little Green Heron 



By RETT E. OLMSTEAD 



THE spring and summer of 1905 furnished abundant opportunity for 

 the study of the Little Green Herons in this vicinity, The birds are 

 numerous and several nests have been found and the birds studied. 

 The birds are found more frequently than elsewhere along the creeks, 

 though not infrequently they are found nesting in an orchard sometimes 

 quite a distance from water. 



LaSalle county, Illinois, furnished my birding ground for study the past 

 season very largely. The Herons were seen fishing along the creeks and 

 their courses noted, and finally a nest was discovered in a hawthorn some 

 twenty rods from Indian Creek. The nest is made of sticks alone, and is a 

 very simple affair at that, somewhat similar to the nest of the Mourning 

 Dove, with only enough sticks to hold the eggs. The nests found, twelve 

 or fifteen of them, were usually located in the top of the trees, some fifteen 

 feet from the ground. 



In the orchard, an old and largely abandoned one, with tall scraggly 

 trees, and located within fifteen rods of Indian Creek, I counted eleven 

 nests of the Herons, but two of them occupied at the time. At any time, 



(12) 



