124 THE GREAT BLUE HERON. 



of the breeding season, when the males begin to look for partners. About 

 sunrise you see a number arrive and alight either on the margin of a broad 

 sand-bar or on a savannah. They come from different quarters, one after 

 another, for several hours; and when you see forty or fifty before you, it 

 is difficult for you to imagine that half the number could have resided in 

 the same district. Yet in the Floridas I have seen hundreds thus collected 

 in the course of a morning. They are now in their full beauty, and no 

 young birds seem to be among them. The males walk about with an air of 

 great dignity, bidding defiance to their rivals, and the females croak to invite 

 the males to pay their addresses to them. The females utter their coaxing 

 notes all at once, and as each male evinces an equal desire to please the 

 object of his affection, he has to encounter the enmity of many an adversary, 

 who, with little attention to politeness, opens his powerful bill, throws out 

 his wings, and rushes with fury on his foe. Each attack is carefully guarded 

 against, blows are exchanged for blows; one would think that a single well- 

 aimed thrust might suffice to inflict death, but the strokes are parried with 

 as much art as an expert swordsman would employ; and, although I have 

 watched these birds for half an hour at a time as they fought on the ground, 

 I never saw one killed on such an occasion; but I have often seen one felled 

 and trampled upon, even after incubation had commenced. These combats 

 over, the males and females leave the place in pairs. They are now mated 

 for the season, at least I am inclined to think so, as I never saw them assem- 

 ble twice on the same ground, and they become comparatively peaceable 

 after pairing. 



It is by no means a constant practice with this species to breed in com- 

 munities, whether large or small; for although I have seen many such asso- 

 ciations, I have also found many pairs breeding apart. Nor do they at all 

 times make choice of the trees placed in the interior of a swamp, for I have 

 found heronries in the pine-barrens of the Floridas, more than ten miles 

 from any marsh, pond, or river. I have also observed nests on the tops of the 

 tallest trees, while others were only a few feet above the ground: some also 

 I have seen on the ground itself, and many on cactuses. In the Carolinas, 

 where Herons of all sorts are extremely abundant, perhaps as much so as in 

 the lower parts of Louisiana or the Floridas, on account of the numerous 

 reservoirs connected with the rice plantations, and the still more numerous 

 ditches which intersect the rice-fields, all of which contain fish of various 

 sorts, these birds find it easy to procure food in great abundance. There the 

 Blue Herons breed in considerable numbers, and if the place they have 

 chosen be over a swamp, few situations can be conceived more likely to 

 ensure their safety, for one seldom ventures into those dismal retreats at the 



