THE AMERICAN EGRET IN A SOUTH CAROLINA 

 CYPRESS FOREST 



ANYONE who knows how abundant the Snowy "Herons" or 

 Egrets once were in our Southern States may be surprised to 

 learn that no little difficulty was experienced in finding a locality 

 where the necessary studies could be made for an Egret group. So 

 effectively, indeed, have the plume-hunters done their work, that it 

 was feared that this beautiful and fast-vanishing species could not 

 be included among the Habitat Groups, when, quite by chance, a colony 

 of Egrets was heard of on a shooting preserve in South Carolina. It 

 appears that when the land was acquired it contained a few Egrets, 

 survivors of a once flourishing colony. The new owners rigidly pro- 

 tected them, and they soon began to increase, forming at the end of 

 seven years a rookery which would have done credit to the days of 

 Audubon. 



The nests were in cypresses at an average height of forty feet, and 

 the birds were studied and photographed from a moss-draped blind 

 attached to the limb of a tree forty-five feet above the water. 



Sketches for the background were also made from the trees in order 

 to secure the desired effect of height. 



The plumes or "aigrettes," for which this Heron and its near rela- 

 tives inhabiting the warmer portions of the world have been slaughtered, 

 are worn by both sexes. They are acquired prior to the nesting season 

 and constitute the birds' wedding costume, to be displayed as the pose of 

 the bird in the group indicates. As the season advances and they be- 

 come frayed and dirty, they are shed. 



All statements that such plumes are obtained from birds kept on 

 "Egret Farms" are absolutely false. 



Aigrettes arc to be secured, therefore, only during the period of 

 reproduction, and this tact, added to the Heron's communal habits, 

 accounts for the surprising rapidity with which the birds have been 

 brought to the verge of extinction. Concealed in the rookery, it is a 

 simple thing to shoot the parents as they return with food for their 

 young; and in the early days of "pluming" it was not unusual for a man 

 to kill several hundred birds at a sitting. 



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