Yellow-crowned Night Heron 89 
Yellow-crowned Night Heron. Nyctanassa violacea. 
A.O.U. Checklist no 203—Colorado Records—Ridgway 79, p. 233; 
Cooke 97, p. 62; Warren 09, p. 33. 
Description. Adult—Crown and a stripe behind the eye white, tinged 
with tawny ; rest of the head all round black; general colour above 
and below greyish-blue, the feathers of the wings and scapulars with 
darker centres and paler edges; an occipital crest of 2 to 3 narrow 
filamentous plumes, and the scapulars elongated, lanceolate and 
partly decomposed; iris yellow, bill and legs black. Length 24; 
wing 12-25; tail 4-75; culmen 2-9; tarsus 3-8. 
The female is slightly smaller, wing 11-0; w young bird is greyish- 
brown streaked and spotted with buffy, below streaked brown and 
white, crown black, streaked with white or buffy. 
Distribution.—From South Carolina, southern, Illinois and Lower 
California south through the West Indies and Central America to 
Brazil; casually further north. 
In Colorado the Night Heron, is a very rare straggler; there was an 
adult male in Mrs. Maxwell’s collection known to have been, killed in 
Colorado, and this constituted the only record until recently, when 
J. W. Frey obtained a single female out of w bunch of five on the 
Arkansas River just above Salida, May Ist, 1908. This specimen, 
reported by Warren, was presented by him to the Colorado College 
Museum. 
ORDER PALUDICOLA. 
This order contains the Cranes and Rails of our fauna, 
together with several other families which do not here 
concern us. It is such a varied assortment that it is 
quite incapable of definition by anatomical characters— 
still less so by external characters, and a reference must 
be made to the diagnoses of the two families. 
Key oF THE Faminizs AND GENERA. 
A. Larger birds; wing over 15; toes short and webbed at the 
base ; hind toe set well above the others (Grucde). Grus, p. 90. 
B. Smaller birds; wing under 10; toes long, slender, not webbed, 
but sometimes lobed (Rallide). 
a. Toes simple, no lateral marginal lobes. 
al Bill longer; culmen exceeding middle toe and claw. 
Rallus, p. 93. 
