t24 
SNOWY HERON. 
yellow feet, and singularly curled plumes of tlie back of the 
present; it is also nearly double tlie size of the European species. 
The snowy heron seems particularly fond of the salt marshes 
during summer, seldom penetrating far inland. Its white 
plumage renders it a very conspicuous object, either while on 
wing, or while wading the meadows or marshes. Its food con- 
sists of those small crabs usually called fiddlers^ mud worms, 
snails, frogs, and lizards. It also feeds on the seeds of some 
species of nymphse, and of several other aquatic plants. 
On the 19th of May I visited an extensive breeding place 
of the snowy heron, among the red cedars of Summers’s Beach, 
on the coast of Cape May. The situation was very seques- 
tered, bounded on the land side by a fresh water marsh or 
pond, and sheltered from the Atlantic by ranges of sand hills. 
The cedars, though not high, were so closely crowded toge- 
ther as to render it difficult to penetrate through among them. 
Some trees contained three, others four nests, built wholly of 
sticks. Each had in it three eggs, of a pale greenish blue 
colour, and measuring an inch and three quarters in length, 
by an inch and a quarter in thickness. Forty or fifty of these 
eggs were cooked, and found to be well tasted ; the white was 
of a bluish tint, and almost transparent, though boiled for a 
considerable time ; the yelk very small in quantity. The birds 
rose in vast numbers, but without clamour, alighting on the 
tops of the trees around, and watching the result in silent 
anxiety. Among them were numbers of the night heron, and 
two or three purple-headed herons. Great quantities of egg 
shells lay scattered under the trees, occasioned by the depre- 
dations of the crows, who were continually hovering about the 
place. On one of the nests I found the dead body of the bird 
itself, half devoured by the hawks, crows, or gulls. She had 
probably perished in defence of her eggs. 
The snowy heron is seen at all times during summer among 
the salt marshes, watching and searching for food, or passing, 
sometimes in flocks, from one part of the bay to the other. 
They often make excursions up the rivers and inlets, but re- 
turn regularly in the evening to the red cedars on the beach 
