78 BIRDS OF ALABAMA 



bayous, repairing about sundown to a common roost in some 

 inaccessible swamp or timbered bottom. McCormack speaks 

 of the species as quite common on Pond Creek (near Leigh- 

 ton) during the latter half of summer and early fall, where 

 sometimes as many as a dozen may be seen at a time, some 

 standing motionless in the water with their long necks folded 

 on the breast, some wading along with stately step as far 

 out as the middle, and others flying up and down the creek, 

 occasionally alighting with much flopping and balancing in 

 the tops of the trees scattered along the creek.t 



Food habits. — Nuttall states that the food of this species 

 consists of frogs, small fish, lizards, mice, moles, insects, small 

 water snakes, and the seeds of pondlilies4 The stomach of 

 the specimen secured at Stiggins Lake contained 3 gizzard 

 shad (Dorosoma cepedianum) about 5 inches long. 



SNOWY EGRET; "WHITE CRANE :" Egretta thula thtda 



(Molina).* 



State records. — The beautiful snowy egret, a much smaller 

 bird than the white egret, has suffered severely from persecu- 

 tion by plume hunters, so that now it is extremely rare, and 

 confined to a few isolated colonies on the coast from North 

 arolina to Florida and Louisiana. It occurred in former years 

 in Alabama but seems now to be entirely extinct in the State. 

 Brown's reportf of several small white herons seen at a dis- 

 tance, April 29, 1878, at Coosada, is quite unsatisfactory, as is 

 his further statement that the species is said to be very com- 

 mon during summer, for there is a strong probability that 

 some, if not all, of the birds spoken of were little blue herons 

 in the white phase. 



McCormack says this species seems to be quite rare, as he 

 had met with it only a few times. Avery does not include 

 it in his published list, but in his note book he has recorded a 

 specimen taken July 1, 1889, in Greene County, which he 

 mounted for John Cocke, Jr., of Cockeville. Captain Sprinkle, 

 who formerly hunted this bird for its plumes, tells me that it 



tLeighton News, vol. 2, No. fi, March 14, 1891. 

 iNuttall, Thomas, Manual of ornithology, water birds, p. 48, 1834. 

 *Esretta candidlssima of the A. O. U. Check-list; for change of name see The Auk, 

 vol. 35, p. 204, 1918. 



tBull. Nutt. Ornith. Club, vol. 4, p. 13, 1879. 



