THE SNOWY HERON. 



( A rdea candidiss ima . ) 



The fatal gift of beauty. — Byron. 



In every land 

 I saw, wherever light illumineth 

 Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand 

 The downward slope to death. 



— Tennyson. 



Perhaps no class in literature, how- 

 ever bright and eager and alert, could 

 comment quite so feelingly concerning 

 these quotations as could our White Her- 

 ons if they only had a voice in the discus- 

 sion; for true as these expressions have 

 been concerning human history, they 

 have been still truer in the history of 

 bird-life, and true as they have been of 

 bird-life in general, they have been still 

 more pathetically true of these unfortu- 

 nate birds. 



The smaller of our two species of 

 egret, the Snowy Heron, is not a well- 

 known bird in the northern parts of our 

 country, for he is one of the more tropi- 

 cal members of the family, and his usual 

 range is from southern Indiana to Ar- 

 gentine Republic and Chili. Occasional 

 stragglers do sometimes venture as far 

 north as Nova Scotia and Minnesota, but 

 the most northern breeding place is along 

 the lower Wabash, and the birds found 

 north of this are adventurers beyond the 

 usual limits. 



The Snowy Heron can be distin- 

 guished from our other White Heron, the 

 American egret, by its smaller size (it 

 is about two feet in length), and during 

 the breeding season by the fact that its 

 ornamental plumes are curved, and not 

 straight. Another peculiarity of the bird 

 is the fact that its legs are black and the 

 feet yellow, a circumstance that gives 

 this part of its anatomy an odd, contrasty 

 effect. Like the other herons, this bird is 

 fond of marshy places and the edges of 

 ponds and swamps, where it feeds on the 

 animals found near the water's edge — 

 frogs, crawfish, fishes and aquatic insects. 

 So far as its food is concerned it could 

 not be said to be either particularly help- 

 ful nor injurious to human interests. 



It does not possess the stateliness char- 

 acteristic of most of the members of the 

 family, and in comparison with them 

 seem rather short and dumpish. It 

 strikes one as being graceful rather than 

 dignified. The nests are made of sticks, 

 and are built in rushes, bushes or trees 

 in swampy places, and the birds always 

 associate in colonies when they build. 



Leaving human relations out of con- 

 sideration, the Snowy Heron stood as 

 many chances of survival as most birds, 

 and perhaps even more, for it had few 

 natural enemies. With man upon the 

 scene, however, there are few creatures 

 against which the hand of fate is so se- 

 vere. Among the combination of cir- 

 cumstances that threaten its extinction is 

 the fact that it is during the breeding- 

 season — when its death means also the 

 death of the next generation by starva- 

 tion, that it is most relentlessly pursued, 

 because it is at that time it wears the 

 coveted plume. Another circumstance 

 to its disadvantage is the fact that it nests 

 in colonies, so that to find one, means to 

 find several, and at a time, too, when 

 the birds are particularly unlikely to seek 

 refuge in flight, as this would mean a 

 desertion of their homes. 



It is perhaps to the bird's disadvantage, 

 too, that it is only the plumes that are 

 desired, for even after public sentiment 

 is educated to a point when to wear a 

 dead bird on one's bonnet is a sign of 

 bad taste, savoring too much of slaugh- 

 ter, a few plumes are an innocent-looking 

 bit of decoration, and do not hint at the 

 tragedy behind them. In society, where 

 a scalplock would not be tolerated as a 

 decoration, one may wear jewels obtained 

 by murder and robbery. 



H. Walton Clark. 



