62 Bird - Lore 



and Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Crested Flycatchers, Tufted Tits and glowing 

 Prothonotary Warblers, at home in holes in the cypress; Parula Warblers weav- 

 ing their cradles in the Spanish moss, — all accepted us as part of the fauna, 

 and it was not until we reached the first dwellings of the rookery that our pres- 

 ence caused alarm. 



Here, at the tops of the tallest cypresses, seventy to one hundred feet from 

 the water, the Great Blue Herons had built their broad platforms. With pro- 

 testing squawks, they stretched their legs, folded their necks and took to the air, 

 leaving their nearly fledged young to peer oyer the edge of the nest at the dis- 

 turbing object below. With no less concern, I looked at the disturbing object 

 above. If the Egrets had chosen similar nesting sites they could be photog- 

 raphed only from a balloon. 



"THEY CAME CAUTIOUSLY TO THE MORE DISTANT BRANCHES" 



Beyond the Great Blue Herons, was a settlement of the singularly marked 

 Yellow-crowned Night Herons. Their nests were within fifteen feet of the water, 

 but they slipped away, so quietly that only close watching showed them dis- 

 appearing through the trees beyond. For two miles we paddled thus in a 

 bewildering maze of sunlit, buttressed cypress trunks with shiny, round-headed 

 ' knees' protruding from the water, and with every branch heavily moss-draped. 

 The dark waters showed no track, the brown trunks no blaze. We seemed to 

 be voyaging into the unknown. 



Finally, the environs were passed and we now approached the most densely 

 populated part of the rookery. Thousands of Louisiana and Little Blue Herons 

 left their nests in the lower branches and bushes, their croaking chorus of alarm 

 punctuated by the louder more raucous squawks of hundreds of Egrets, as they 



