ARDEIDrE — THE HERONS — DICHROMANASSA. 
The flight of this species is said to be more elevated and regular than that of the 
smaller Herons. It is peculiarly graceful during the mating season, especially when 
one unmated male is pursuing another. It is said to pass through the air with great 
celerity, turning and cutting about in curious curves and zigzags, the pursuing bird 
frequently erecting its beautiful crest and uttering a cry at the moment it is about to 
give a thrust at the other. When travelling to and from their feeding-grounds, it 
propels itself with the usual regular flapping, and in the customary manner of 
flight of other Herons. On approaching a landing-place, it performs several circum- 
volutions, as if to satisfy itself that all is safe before, alighting. It is much more shy 
and wary than the smaller Herons ; and after the breeding season is over it is almost 
impossible to shoot one, except when it is taken by surprise, or when flying overhead 
among the mangroves. 
Audubon regarded the two forms as identical, and mentions finding them in what 
he regarded their mature and their immature conditions, breeding together. At this 
time, in passing and repassing they are said to utter peculiar rough sounds which it 
is impossible to describe. He states that their nests are placed for the most part on 
the southwestern sides of the mangroves immediately bordering the Keys. They are 
rarely near together, and never on trees at a distance from the water. Some are 
placed on the tops of the mangroves, others only a foot or two above high-water 
mark. The nest is quite flat, is large for the bird, and formed of dry sticks inter- 
spersed with grass and leaves. The eggs are usually three in number, average an 
inch and three quarters in length, and one and three eighths in breadth, having an 
elliptical form, and are of a uniform pale sea-green color ; they are excellent eating. 
Both birds incubate, as is the case with all Herons. 
In its habits it seems to be as strictly marine as the Great White Heron. When 
wounded, it strikes with its bill, scratches with its claws, and, throwing itself on its 
back, emits its rough and harsh notes, keeping its crest erected and expanded, and its 
feathers swollen. 
Mr. 1ST. B. Moore, of Manatee, Florida, is of the opinion that Peale’s Egret and the 
Reddish Egret are identical as species. He does not think, with Audubon, that the 
white form is the young bird and the reddish the adult, but that old and young may 
be white like the Pealei, blue and reddish like the rufescens, or may exist in a pied 
form. On the 13th of July he found a nest, where the parents were in the plumage 
of rufescens, one of the young pure white, the other a blue or gray bird. The nest 
was in a mangrove tree on a wet Key, and was the only Heron’s nest there. Both 
parents were seen. The young were taken, and the attempt was made to keep them 
alive in order to watch their change of plumage ; but it was not successful. Except 
in the color of the down, the young birds were alike in many respects — e.g. the bluisli- 
ash color of the skin, the proportions and color of the eyes, etc. 
Mr. Moore has twice met with specimens of pied, or white and blue varieties of 
this species, and feels quite positive that the white bird is an unchanging variety 
of the Reddish Egret, and that the pied varieties are equally permanent in their 
plumage. The young bird in the white plumage remains the same for at least 
twenty-two months, as is proved by the one kept by Dr. Bachman. 
The fact that Dr. Gambel has seen the young of the rufescens in purple plumage, 
while it does controvert Audubon’s views that the young are always white, by no 
means necessarily shows that none of the young are white, or that a large portion 
may not be so. 
Mr. Moore refers to the peculiar petulance displayed by all Herons while feeding, 
and which is only manifested towards their own species. Several Herons, each of 
