YELLOW-CROWNED HERON. 553 
also similar. The very imperfect figure and description of this spe- 
cies by Catesby, seem to have led the greater part of European orni- 
thologists astray, who appear to have copied their accounts from that 
erroneous source ; otherwise it is difficult to conceive why they should 
either have given it the name of Yellow-crowned, or have described it 
as being only fifteen inches in length; since the crown of the perfect 
bird is pure white, and the whole length very near two feet. The 
name, however, erroneous as it is, has been retained in the present ac- 
count, for the purpose of more particularly pointing out its absurdity, 
and designating the species. 
This bird inhabits the lower parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and 
Louisiana, in the summer season ; reposing a the day among low, 
swampy woods, and feeding only in the night. It builds in societies, 
making its nest with sticks, among the branches of low trees, and lays 
four pale blue eggs. This species is not numerous in Carolina, 
which, with its solitary mode of life, makes this bird but little known 
there. It abounds on the Bahama Islands, where it also breeds; and 
great numbers of the young, as we are told, are yearly taken for the 
table, being accounted in that quarter excellent eating. This bird 
also extends its migrations into Virginia, and even farther north; one 
of them having been shot, a few years ago, on the borders of the 
Schuylkill, below Philadelphia. 
The food of this species consists of small fish, crabs, and lizards, 
particularly the former ; it also appears to have a strong attachment to 
the neighborhood of the ocean. 
The Yellow-crowned Heron is twenty-two inches in length, from 
the point of the bill to the end of the tail; the long, flowing plumes 
of the back extend four inches farther; breadth, from tip to tip of the 
expanded wings, thirty-four inches ; bill, black, stout, and about four 
inches in length, the upper mandible grooved exactly like that of the 
Common Night Heron; lores, pale green ; irides, fiery red ; head, and 
part of the neck, black, marked on each cheek with an oblong spot of 
white ; crested crown and upper part of the head, white, ending in 
two long, narrow, tapering plumes, of pure white, more than seven 
inches long; under these are a few others, of a blackish color; rest 
of the neck, and whole lower parts, fine ash, somewhat whitish on that 
part of the neck where it joins the black; upper parts, a dark ash, 
each feather streaked broadly down the centre with black, and bor- 
dered with white; wing-quills, deep slate, edged finely with white ; 
tail, even at the end, and of the same ash color; wing-coverts, deep 
slate, broadly edged with pale cream; from each shoulder proceed a 
number of long, loosely-webbed, tapering feathers, of an ash color, 
streaked broadly down the middle with black, and extending four 
inches or more beyond the tips of the wings; legs and feet, yellow ; 
middle claw, pectinated. Male and female, as in the Common Night 
Heron, alike in plumage. 
and appearance is decidedly a Nycticorax, and at the extremity of that form we 
should place it. Its manners, and social manner of breeding, are exactly those of 
the Qua-Bird, but it possesses the crest and long dorsal plumes of the Egrets. As 
far as we at present see, it will form the passage from the last-mentioned form to 
the Night Herons, which will again reach the Bitterns by those confused under the 
name of Tiger Bitterns. — Tr 
47 
