BLUE HERON. 61 
While on Cayo Island, in the Gulf of Mexico, on the 10th of April 
1837, I observed large flocks of the Blue and Green Herons, Ardea 
cerulea and A. virescens, arriving from the westward about the middle 
of the day. They flew at a considerable height, and came down like 
so many hawks, to alight on the low bushes growing around the se- 
questered ponds; and this without any other noise than the rustling 
of their wings as they glided through the air towards the spot on which 
they at once alighted. There they remained until sunset, when they 
all flew off, so that none were seen there next day. This shews that 
although these species migrate both by day and night, they are quite 
diurnal during the period of their residence in any section of the coun- 
try which they may have chosen for a season. It is more than pro- 
bable that it has been from want of personal knowledge of the habits 
of these birds, that authors have asserted that all Herons are noctur- 
nally inclined. This certainly is by no means the case, although they 
find it advantageous to travel by night during their migrations, which 
is a remarkable circumstance as opposed to their ordinary habits. In 
the instance above mentioned, I found the birds remarkably gentle, 
which was probably owing to fatigue. 
The Blue Heron breeds earlier or later according to the tempera- 
ture of the district to which it resorts for that purpose, and therefore 
earlier in Florida, where, however, considerable numbers remain, during 
the whole year than in other parts of the United States. Thus I have 
found them in the southern parts of that country, sitting on their eggs, 
on the Ist of March, fully a month earlier than in the vicinity of 
Bayou Sara, on the Mississippi, where they are as much in advance of 
those which betake themselves, in very small numbers indeed, to our 
Middle Districts, in which they rarely begin to breed before the fifteenth 
of May. 
The situations which they choose for their nests are exceedingly 
varied. I have found them sitting on their eggs on the Florida Keys, 
and on the islands in the Bay of Galveston, in Texas, in nests placed 
amidst and upon the most tangled cactuses, so abundant on those cu- 
rious isles, on the latter of which the climbing Rattlesnake often 
gorges itself with the eggs of this and other species of Heron, as well 
as with their unfledged young. In the Lower parts of Louisiana, it 
breeds on low bushes of the water-willow, as it also does in South 
Carolina; whereas, on the islands on the coast of New Jersey, and 
