THE CONDOR 
| Vol. VIII 
4<j 
pitched into the meal with a vigor and energy that would have amazed a litter of 
young pigs. 
When you climb anywhere near a nest after the youngsters have had a good 
meal, they will begin to “unswallow” as fast as they have gobbled it down. On 
account of this habit, especially common among the young night herons, we found 
it always safe to keep out of the way as much as possible, or at least not approach 
a nest full of young birds from below. 
A young night heron is well adapted to climbing from limb to limb by reason 
of his long, angling toes and the ability to hook his neck or bill, over a limb and 
draw himself up as a parrot does. Not so with the young blue herons; they are as 
awkward about the limbs of the trees as their parents are stately in moving 
thru the air. When overbalanced on a limb, they often fall to the ground. 
The young birds of both species seem instinctively to know that falling from 
the trees to the ground below means death. Not because they are hurt in the 
least by the fall, but because the old birds never descend to the ground beneath 
the nest-tree. The ground under the trees was strewn with the dead bodies of 
young birds. The young are fed only in the tree top and those below starve in 
the very sight of their parents. 
Several times we saw young night herons hanging dead in the branches of 
the trees. In one tree we found two of these youngsters hanging side by side only 
a foot apart. In walking about the limbs, the larger of the two birds had caught 
its foot in a crotch and hung itself head downward. That, in itself, was not un- 
usual, but the second bird hung by the neck only a few inches away. It seems 
that this smaller heron had hung himself dead, rather than fall to the ground; he 
had fallen or overbalanced on the small limb and, as is the custom, had hooked his 
chin over the branch to keep from falling to the ground. His clutched right foot 
showed that the death struggle had been a reaching and clutching to gain the limb. 
The head was not caught between the branches as the other bird’s foot, but was 
simply hooked over a bend in the twig. Had he thrown his head back a trifle, he r 
would have dropped to the ground. We demonstrated this by turning the bill to 
an ankle of forty-five degrees and it dropped to the bushes twenty feet below. 
How the bird could have held the rigid position of the neck thruout its death 
struggle, I do not understand, unless it was a case where the force of instinct was 
strong even to death. 
Portland, Oregon. 
The Hermit Warbler in Washington 
BY J. H. BOWLES 
A N experience covering eight years in northwestern Washington has convinced 
me that the hermit warbler ( Dendroica occidentalism is a regular summer 
resident. The bird student however, must consider himself doubly fortu- 
nate if he can find some easily accessible location where he can study these 
birds at any time thruout the summer, for it is far from common even in the most 
favored districts and is exceedingly local in distribution. As an example, I may 
quote Mr. S. F. Rathbun, of Seattle, who tells me that D. occidentalis is practically 
unknown in his locality. On the contrary, around Tacoma the birds are of regular 
occurrence as summer residents, altho the two places are only twenty-five miles 
apart, and are situated at the same altitude and on the same body of water. 
