BIRDS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
65 
black (sometimes dull black with little or no greenish) ; a narrow stripe on fore¬ 
head reaching to eye ; sides of head, chin, throat and under parts white, often tinged 
with a faint yellowish or a very delicate light purple color; wings and tail ashy- 
blue ; neck, except in front, similar but paler. The adults frequently have 3 long 
and white occipital feathers, which, when rolled together, appear as one thick round 
feather. 
Young .—Bill (dried skin) black and yellowish ; iris light yellow ; legs yellowish ; 
upper parts light-brown, spotted or streaked with whitish ; tail about same as adult; 
sides of head and neck, and under plumage generally, striped with whitish and 
dusky. A young bird before me differs from the last chiefly in having top of head 
and large space on interscapular region, dull brownish-gray, without spots. 
Habitat. —America, from the British possessions southward to the Falkland 
Islands, including part of the West Indies. 
Next to the Green Heron the Night Heron is unquestionably the 
most abundant of the family in this state. The adult birds are easily 
distinguished from other herons by the black feathers on top of head 
and back, red eyes, and frequently three long, fine, white feathers, 
which grow from the base of the head. The appellation, Night Heron, 
is highly appropriate, as this bird is strictly nocturnal in its habits. 
During the daytime the Night Heron is inactive, and generally is found 
perched on a log or the limb of a tree in a quiet nook about the swamps 
and streams. As twilight approaches this drowsy wader becomes, as it 
were, a new being—impelled, no doubt, by the pangs of hunger—he 
stands erect, the loose and shaggy plumage, which before seeilied ill- 
adapted to his body, now fits neat and closely as he carefully walks to 
the extremity of the dead and decorticated limb on which he has been 
dozing, and suddenly with a loud squawk launches himself into the air, 
uttering at short intervals his harsh note, and, rising above the trees of 
the forest, he speedily visits some favorite mill-dam. These birds arrive 
in Pennsylvania about the 25th of April and remain until the latter part 
of September. They seem to repair at once on their arrival in spring to 
localities where they are accustomed to breed. After the breeding sea¬ 
son, i. e., about the middle of August, when the young are amply able to 
provide for themselves these birds forsake their nesting-places and 
become quite plentiful along the rivers, streams and bushy marshes. 
The Night Heron rarely, if ever, breeds singly, but always in large 
companies. I have visited, on different occasions, two of these breeding 
resorts and found from twenty-five to seventy-five nests, which like those 
of the other species, were built of sticks and placed usually in high 
trees. In Berks county, near Blue Rock, for many years, this species 
annually reared their young in the edge of a large woods along the 
margin of which was a good-sized stream. In this place many of the 
nests were built in a bunch of saplings, some fifteen or twenty feet high 
and so small in diameter that it was impossible to climb them. Wilson 
has very properly said that the noise of the old and young in one of 
these breeding-places would induce one to suppose that two or three 
hundred Indians were choking or throttling each other. The same 
5 Birds. 
