OF VIRGINIA 35 
they may be found in both salt- and fresh-water marshes, 
they seem to have a preference for the latter, and in the 
long marsh grass, rushes, or on some tussock out in the 
pond, may be found their nest. The nest is a loosely made 
platform of grasses or rushes, placed on the ground near 
the marsh, or more often just a trampled-down mass of 
dry vegetation out in the marsh or pond proper. On this 
are laid those unmistakable glossy olive-drab eggs, three 
to five in number, measuring 1.95x1.50. Fresh eggs 
May 5th to 15th. Only one brood a season. Favorable 
seasous some few remain through the winter with us, but 
the majority reach us about April 10th. 
GENUS IxoOBRYCHUS. 
[191]. Ixobrychus exilis (Gmelin), Least Bittern, 
Ranere.—Temperate North America and northern 
South America. Breeds from southern Oregon, southern 
Saskatchewan, southern Manitoba, southern Quebec, and 
Nova Scotia south to the West Indies and Brazil; winters 
from Florida and the Gulf of Mexico southward. 
This shy, retiring bird is probably never seen by any 
person other than an ornithologist or oologist out in quest 
of specimens. Although it is a bird of the marshes, it is 
rather doubtful if the average gunner in this section out 
after snipe, rails, or ducks, flushes one or knows what 
it is. It inhabits the upper brackish marshes and fresh- 
water sloughs and ponds, while Back Bay, Princess Anne 
County, is a very favorable locality for nesting sites and 
feeding grounds. It does not winter with us, arriving 
about the middle of April. Unlike their comrades of the 
