Herons of the United States 309 



breed while still dressed in immature plumage. These white birds often are 

 mistaken for Egrets, and many of the reports that come to the office of the 

 National Association, telling of the occurrence of 'Egrets,' undoubtedly refer 

 to the Little Blue Heron in the white phase. During July and August many 

 of them wander northward for a time and are often seen as far as New 

 England. These northward summer migrations seem to be undertaken almost 

 entirely by the white birds, a blue one very rarely being reported. Upon the 

 approach of cold weather they retire again to the South. 



Pied Phase (Plate I, No. 4). — When the bird is changing from white to 

 dark plumage it assumes a most unusual appearance. The molting takes 

 place very gradually. The white feathers drop out a few at a time, their 

 places are quickly taken by dark ones, and the bird soon acquires a polka-dot 

 appearance. At first it is a white bird with dark spots scattered about over it, 

 but these spots increase in number until in time we have a dark bird with only 

 a few white spots visible. By autumn the new plumage is fully acquired, the 

 skin of the feet and legs having meanwhile become black. 



The size of the bird appears not to vary in its different aspects of plumage. 

 An average specimen is 22 inches long; the wing (from outer joint to tip) is 

 loK inches long, and the bill is 3 inches long. 



Range. — The third edition (revised) of the 'Check-List' of the American 

 Ornithologists' Union gives the following reference to the range of this bird: 



"North and South America. Formerly bred from Missouri, Indiana, Illi- 

 nois and New Jersey to western Mexico and south to Argentina and Peru; in 

 the United States now breeds locally on the Gulf Coast and in South Carolina ; 

 wanders casually to Nebraska, Wisconsin, Ontario, New England, and Nova 

 Scotia; winters from South Carolina southward." 



The territory given as its breeding range in the United States is inadequate, 

 and to many may be misleading. The Little Blue Heron is rarely if ever 

 common along the sea beaches of the coast. ., It is mainly a bird of fresh and 

 brackish water areas. 



The writer has visited nearly every known breeding colony of water-birds 

 on the islands along the Gulf Coast of the United States, and has no recollection 

 of ever having seen a Little Blue Heron's nest in one of them. Their nesting 

 places may be found at various points in the Gulf States, but not actually on 

 the coast. There is a colony at Avery Island, Louisiana, but that is many 

 miles from the sea beaches and the nesting place is in a fresh water pond. On 

 the Atlantic Coast the birds breed on Cumberland, St. Catherine's, and Ossa- 

 baw Islands on the Georgia Coast, but these are very extensive islands with 

 numerous fresh and brackish water marshes where the birds may seek their 

 food. The same statement may be made of the colony that has long been 

 established on Craney Island in Carteret County, N. C. A possible exception 

 to this rule may be found in the colony reported to occupy a little island in 

 Mosquito Inlet Bird Reservation, near Daytona, Fla. 



