88 
YELLOW-CROWNED HERON. 
builds in societies, making its nest with sticks among the 
branches of low trees, and lays four pale blue eggs. The species 
is not numerous in Carolina, which, with its solitary mode of 
life, makes this bird but little known there. It abounds on the 
Bahama islands, where it also breeds, and great numbers of the 
young, as we are told, are yearly taken for the table, being ac- 
counted in that quarter excellent eating. This bird also extends 
its migrations into Virginia, and even farther northj one of them 
having been shot a few years ago on the borders of Schuylkill 
below Philadelphia. 
The food of this species consists of small fish, crabs and liz- 
ards, particularly the former; it also appears to have a strong 
attachment to the neighbourhood of the ocean. 
The Yellow-crowned Heron is twenty-two inches in length, 
from the point of the bill to the end of the tail; the long flowing 
plumes of the back extend four inches farther; breadth from tip 
to tip of the expanded wings thirty-four inches; bill black, stout, 
and about four inches in length, the upper mandible grooved 
exactly like that of the common Night Heron; lores pale green; 
irides fiery red; head and part of the neck black, marked on 
each cheek with an oblong spot of white; crested crown and up- 
per part of the head white, ending in two long narrow tapering 
plumes of pure white, more than seven inches long; under these 
are a few others of a blackish colour; rest of the neck and whole 
lower parts fine ash, somewhat whitish on that part of the neck 
where it joins the black; upper parts a dark ash, each feather 
streaked broadly down the centre with black, and bordered 
with white; wing quills deep slate, edged finely with white; 
tail even at the end, and of the same ash colour; wing coverts 
deep slate, broadly edged with pale cream; from each shoulder 
proceed a number of long loosely webbed tapering feathers, of 
an ash colour, streaked broadly down the middle with black, 
and extending four inches or more beyond the tips of the wings; 
legs and feet yellow; middle claw pectinated. Male and female, 
as in the common Night Heron, alike in plumage. 
I strongly suspect that the species called by naturalists the 
