Lake Umbagog
1903.
June 14
(No 9)
to my surprise she adopted tactics wholly different
from those which she pursued last evening. On the
present occasion she pursued me for a considerable
distance by a succession of short flights alighting each
time directly in line with my course in open water
and taking wing again just before I got within long
gun range. It seemed to me quite evident that she
was trying to lure me away from her young but if
so she made no attempt to simulate the actions of
a wounded bird.
Black Duck with young
  A Fish Hawk soaring over the flooded meadows
passed me within 100 yards or less a number of times.
I saw no Herons, either here or during the trip up
the river earlier in the day. Alva Coolidge tells me
that the Great Blue Herons are nesting again in large 
numbers near Sunday Cove. (He afterwards wrote both me
and John E. Thayer that he visited this heronry a day
or two after my departure. There were upwards of 100 
nests but nearly all of them were empty. He saw only
one living adult bird which was feeding young in one 
of the nests but he found about twenty-five dead
Herons (all adults) lying about on the ground. Most
of them had been covered with rotten wood torn from
an old log. He thought they had been dead about two
weeks. Not far from the place he came upon a
deserted camp on the Lake shore where Partridge wings
lay scattered about. Evidently some murderous vandal
or vandals had visited the heronry early in June and
killed practically all the birds. Their eggs, he thought, 
had been afterwards eaten by other birds,
Fish Hawk.
Great Blue Herons nesting near Sunday Cove