in Butler's Birds of Indiana: "The lo- 

 cality is a timbered belt, the ground be- 

 ing submerged with twelve to eighteen 

 inches of water at the time. At our ap- 

 proach, upon the discharge of a gun, the 

 birds arose with a noise like thunder and 

 hovered in hundreds above the tree tops. 

 They were of three species — the Great 

 Blue Herons and the black-crowned 

 night herons comprising the majority ; 

 but the beautiful white plumage of the 

 American Egret was conspicuous 

 through the feathered cloud, and these 

 birds were quite numerous. 



''Nearly all the trees throughout the 

 area were loaded with nests, those of the 

 two species first named being found up- 

 on the same tree, but the latter birds 

 appeared to build in little groups by 

 themselves. We did not climb to exam- 

 ine the nests, but most of them appeared 

 to contain young birds. Many of the 

 trees were dead, apparently from the 

 effects of the birds building and roosting 

 upon them." 



These Herons sometimes select queer 

 nesting sites ; it is recorded that along 

 the Colorado River they build their nests 

 on the ledges of rock which project from 

 the sides of the deep canyons. 



Other heronries occur in Lake County, 

 Jasper County, Carroll County and in 



many other places in Indiana and Illi- 

 nois. The Great Blue Heron nests in 

 April or May, and the young are reared 

 and ready to fly during June or July. 

 After they are reared, the young birds 

 wander about the vicinity of the nesting 

 place and from August to September be- 

 gin their southward migration in isolated 

 groups ; some birds have been known to 

 linger as late as November or December 

 before starting for their southern home. 



Like other birds which subsist upon 

 fish, the Great Blue Heron is not very 

 palatable for the table, although it has 

 been used for culinary purposes, espe- 

 cially the young birds which are called 

 ''Squab Herons." They taste similar 

 to the wild ducks, but have a strong and 

 disagreeable flavor. 



This great bird is being persecuted 

 along with the egret and other herons, 

 by the plume hunters, sportsmen, lumber- 

 men and farmers, who have ruthlessly 

 shot the old birds, leaving the young 

 birds to perish or the eggs to spoil. It 

 would be very desirable to have the few 

 remaining heronries protected, as the 

 birds do man no harm but rather do him 

 considerable good in destroying noxious 

 insects and rodents. This is one of the 

 many birds which are worthy of protec- 

 tion. Collins Thurber. 



PLANT STUDIES 



PART VIII, WEEDS AND THEIR WAYS 



Plants that persist in growing where 

 they are not wanted, or which, for any 

 other reason, are obnoxious to us, we 

 call Weeds. Very few of our weeds are 

 native most of them having been brought 

 from Europe either by accident or by 

 design. Many plants that have been 

 brought over were thought to have been 

 either useful or ornamental, but have 

 since spread over our prairies and be- 

 come great nuisances. Some weeds have 

 stolen a passage across the ocean in the 

 ballast of ships or in packages of flower 

 seeds. 



Once over here, they settle down to 

 stay, pretending to be honest citizens, 

 though they never take out naturaliza- 



tion papers. In most cases they are more 

 vigorous than our own plants and so of- 

 ten crowd these out. In their native land 

 they had less space in which to spread, 

 and also were obliged to compete with 

 the crops, so that gradually they ac- 

 quired better methgds of distribution and 

 of reproduction than are yet possessed by 

 our plants. The Russian thistle, a well 

 known emigrant, a vigorous plant indeed, 

 sometimes growing to be three feet in 

 diameter, breaks off at the base when the 

 seeds are mature — one plant produces as 

 many as 200,000 — and is blown by the 

 wind to great distances. The dispersal of 

 seeds arid their protection by the plant 

 has been spoken of at another time, but 



214 



