92 
WADING BIRDS. 
States, but is wholly unknown in the high boreal regions of 
the continent. In the winter it proceeds as far south as the 
tropics, having been seen in the marshes of Cayenne, and their 
breeding-stations are known to extend from New Orleans to 
Massachusetts. It arrives in Pennsylvania early in the month 
of April, and soon takes possession of its ancient nurseries, 
which are usually (in the Middle and Southern States) the 
most solitary and deeply shaded part of a cedar-swamp, or 
some inundated and almost inaccessible grove of swamp-oaks. 
In these places, or some contiguous part of the forest, near a 
pond or stream, the timorous and watchful flock pass away the 
day until the commencement of twilight, when the calls of 
hunger and the coolness of evening arouse the dozing throng 
into life and activity. At this time, high in the air, the parent 
birds are seen sallying forth towards the neighboring marshes 
and strand of the sea in quest of food for themselves and 
their young; as they thus proceed in a marshalled rank at 
intervals they utter a sort of recognition call, like the guttural 
sound of the syllable 'kwah, uttered in so hollow and sepulchral 
a tone as almost to resemble the retchings of a vomiting person. 
These venerable eyries of the Kwah Birds have been occupied 
from the remotest period of time by about eighty to a hundred 
pairs. When their ancient trees were levelled by the axe. they 
have been known to remove merely to some other quarter of 
the same swamp ; and it is only when they have been long 
teased and plundered that they are ever known to abandon 
their ancient stations. Their greatest natural enemy is the 
Crow ; and according to the relation of Wilson, one of these 
heronries, near Thompson’s Point, on the banks of the Dela- 
ware, was at length entirely abandoned through the persecu- 
tion of these sable enemies. Several breeding-haunts of the 
Kwah Birds occur among the red-cedar groves on the sea- 
beach of Cape May ; in these places they also admit the associa- 
tion of the Little Egret, the Green Bittern, and the Blue Heron. 
In a very secluded and marshy island in Fresh Pond, near Bos- 
ton, there likewise exists one of these ancient heronries ; and 
though the birds have been frequently robbed of their eggs in 
