HERONS 



(196) Herodias egretta 



(Gmel.) (Lat., a heron, also a plume). 



EGRET ; GREAT WHITE 

 EGRET. Plumage entirely white 

 at all seasons. During the breeding 

 season, back with a magnificent 

 train of long white, finely decom- 

 posed plumes, extending tar beyond 

 the tail; no plumes on the head or 

 neck at any time. L., 40.00, not 

 including the train; Ex., 55.00; W., 

 16.50; T., 6.00; B., 4.75. Nest — 

 A frail platform of sticks in bushes 

 o\'er water; three to five dull 

 greenish-blue eggs, 2.25 x 1.45. 



Range — Breeds from N. Car. 

 and the Gulf coast southward, and 

 in Cal. and Ore.; formerly north 

 in the Miss. Valley to \^^is. Casual 

 along the coast north to Nova Scotia. 



allowed to fish there, the ones thej' consume ordinarily are 

 of little value, and certainly not as much as the sight of these 

 great birds slowly and majestically flapping their way across 

 the sky. Along the coast, they often may be seen standing 

 on the edge of fish weirs or, at low tide, wading about in 

 the nets spearing the smaller fish caught therein. 



EGRETS are still to be found in very small scattered 

 colonies in the most impenetrable swamps of some of the 

 South Atlantic and Gulf States. But never again will man 

 see, in this country, the sights recorded by travelers down 

 the St. John's, Indian, or St. Lucie rivers, Florida, thirty 

 years or even twenty years ago; whole islands would appear 

 as though covered with a snowy mantle and shores of lagoons 

 were lined with hundreds of beautiful white egrets. The 

 destruction of these and the most exquisite SNOWY 

 EGRETS is a painful subject, but it is one that cannot be 

 impressed too strongly or too often upon the people in order 

 to help preserve the few of these birds now left and to 

 prevent others from sharing a like fate from a like cause. 



