1893
June 19
Saybrook Ferry, Conn.
 Clear and warm with fresh W. to S.W. wind.
 
 At 9.30A.M. I started up river in the boat
and rowed to the creek where we were yesterday
afternoon. The water was shoal along the shore for the
tide was out and as I rowed slowly along I
noticed innumerable small eels on the sandy bottom.
There seemed to be about one for each square yard.
They averaged only three or four inches in length.
Turning into the creek and reaching the cat-tails I
started a pair of Least Bitterns from the edge of
the water and a little further on another pair and
one single bird while still further up I heard two
or three more calling among the flags. Evidently the
place was alive with them.
[margin]A breeding
colony of 
Least Bitterns[/margin]
 On reaching the knoll I found F'axon, who had
preceded us by land. He took me to a cedar swamp
where he had heard a White-eyed Vireo. The cedars
(Cupressus thyoides) were growing thickly in places and
some of them were fire trees sixty feet or more in
height with trunks about a foot in diameter. In
one of smaller growth but fully thirty five feet
above the ground was the nest of a Green Heron.
Three young apparently nearly full grown were standing
(or sitting) in the nest with their long necks still
covered with whitish down stretched stiffly upwards.
Some skunk cabbages under the tree were most
conspicuously whitewashed with the excrement of
the young Herons and this first attracted our attention
to the nest. The old birds were seen passing to
& from the nest & the river marshes.
[margin]Nest of
Green Heron[/margin]
