CATALOGUE OF CANADIAN BIRDS. 131 



almost deafening and the odour arising from the filth with which 

 the trees and ground were covered was extremely disagreeable. 

 We tramped all through the heronry and calculated that it must 

 extend about half a mile in each direction. The nests were all 

 of the same pattern, great cumbersome piles of sticks, about a 

 foot thick, with but a very shallow cavity and no liningr." 



The heronry on Riding Mountain, Man., is thus described by Mr. 

 E. Seton-Thompson : — 



" We had struck a heronry ; hundreds of these birds were passing 

 to and fro, and, on going forward a hundred yards or sc , we found 

 the tops of the poplars covered with their nests, the young birds, 

 full grown but not able to fly, perched on the highest trees. The 

 nests were made of the small dead branches of the poplar and 

 were placed as near the tops of the trees as possible. 



" These mountains are full of small ponds and deep marshes 

 which swarm with lizards and small fish, on which the herons feed. 

 On getting to an open space near the heronry we could see the old 

 birds coming and going in every direction. Those coming home 

 were stuffed to the bill with food for their young, making them 

 present a very ungainly figure, as they lazily flapped their way 

 towards the woods." 



A few years ago this species bred in the township of Escott, 

 Ont., and some of the old nests were still left in 1895. In the next 

 township — Yonge — a few birds still breed near Macintosh Mills, 

 and their nests may be noticed on some tall pine trees. A large 

 heronry existed in a bush near the River Tay, Lanark Co., in 1885. 

 The nests were built mostly on ash trees, three or four nests often 

 in one tree. It still breeds in the township of Elizabethtown, 

 where there is a large heronry near Graham Lake. Two sets of 

 eggs, five of each, were taken from this heronry on May 6th, 1899. 

 {Rev. C.J. Young.) 



In Muskoka, Ont., they build in tall pine trees. One tree on 

 an island in a lake about twelve miles from Bracebridge had 

 between fifteen and twenty nests in it. They used to breed in 

 Muskoka in great numbers, but have been driven farther back 

 and are rather scarce now. I have known one to sit upon a heap 

 of floating mud in a small lake, for thirty-six hours, catching fish. 

 They feed upon frogs and fish. At Crane Lake, Assiniboia, I 



