44 
ARDEA VIOLACEA. 
shot a few years ago on the borders of Schuylkill below 
Philadelphia. 
The food of this species consists of small fish, crabs, 
and lizards, 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 upper 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 natura- 
lists the Cayenne night heron (. Ardea Cayanensis ,) is 
nothing more than the present, with which, according 
to their descriptions, it seems to agree almost exactly. 
