BIRDS OF THE SHORE AND MARSHES 231 



suddenly orphaned, have slowly starved to death, and so 

 rapidly hastened the day when the extinction of the 

 species must end the sinful folly. 

 {See plate, page 226.) 



The Little Green Heron 



This most abundant member of his tropical tribe that 

 spends the summer with us, is a shy, solitary bird of the 

 swamps where you would lose your rubber boots in the 

 quagmire if you attempted to know him too intimately. 

 But you may catch a glimpse of him as he wades about the 

 edge of a pond or creek with slow, calculated steps, looking 

 for his supper. All herons become more active toward 

 evening because their prey does. By day, this heron, like 

 his big, blue cousin, might be mistaken for a stump or 

 snag among the sedges and bushes by the waterside, so 

 dark and still is he. Herons are accused of the tropical 

 vice of laziness ; but surely a bird that travels from northern 

 Canada to the tropics and back again every year to earn its 

 living as the httle green heron does, is not altogether lazy. 

 Startle him, and he springs into the air with a loud 

 squawk, flapping his broad wings and trailing his greenish- 

 yellow legs behind him stork fashion. 



He and his mate have long, dark-green crests on their 

 odd-shaped, receding heads and some lengthened, pointed 

 feathers between the shoulders of their green or grayish- 

 green hunched backs. The reddish chestnut color on 

 their necks fades into the brownish ash of their under 

 parts, divided by a line of dark ^ots on the white throat 

 that widen on the breast. Although the httle green heron 

 is the smallest member of this tribe of large birds that we 



