ORNITHOLOGIST 
— A X I) — 
()()L()GIST. 
Single Copy, 
10 Cents. 
VOL. VII. NORWICH, CONN., JULY, 1882. NO. 18. 
Malheur Lake, Oregon. 
il.OO per Joseph M. Wade, Editor and Publisher. 
Annum. Established, March, 1875. 
BY CAPT. CHAS. E. BENDIRE, U. S. A. 
During these maneuvers I was laying in 
some tall grass, on a little elevation close 
to the shore, and watching the birds with a 
strong night-glass. After a little further 
hesitation, the main body came up, and 
for such a number of birds—there must 
have been at least five hundred of them, 
they kept singularly quiet, an occasional 
guttural grunt, resembling the word dooe, 
dooe, w'as all I could hear. Their distrust 
apparently quieted, they now commenced 
to divide themselves into parties of about 
thirty birds each, who acted in concert, 
forming a semi-circle, gradually closing in 
towards the shore, and driving large num¬ 
bers of fish with them into the shallow 
w'ater, and then they commenced their fish¬ 
ing operations in earnest. Such a splash¬ 
ing as took place is impossible to describe : 
it must be seen to form an idea of it. 
Each fish w'as grasped in the middle, 
thrown up a foot or so in the aii’. caught 
in the descent, and swallowed head fore¬ 
most. I think that fro!n three to four large 
fisli were disposed of in this manner by 
each bird, the last one or two being prob¬ 
ably can'ied off in their cajjacious pouch 
or gular sack. The dexterity with which 
these birds handled fish fully eighteen 
inches long was something wonderful, very 
few getting away from them. As soon as 
one bird had caught what it required, it 
withdrew and another would take its })lace. 
There was no quarrelling; everything 
seemed to be done systematically, and I 
have seldom seen a more interesting sight 
than I did during the two hours on the 
night I watched these birds. There ap¬ 
peared to be a good deal of variation in the 
color of their immense bills, some being 
almost dark orange red while others w'ere 
straw yellow. I also noticed that the cu¬ 
rious horny excrescence on the ujiper man¬ 
dible, characteristic of this sj^ecies during 
the breeding season in lioth sexes, and 
commonly called “ centre-I)oard,” varied 
also considerably in length, height and 
general shape. To what use this curious 
ajjpendage is juit. it being only developed 
during the breeding season, and droj^ijed 
again after this is over, I am unable to tell, 
or even make a guess at, and I shall leave 
this for some one else to explain. 
On my second visit to these Islands I 
found that most of the shallow platforms, 
occupied as nests by the Great Blue Heron, 
contained their full complement of five 
eggs. As none of these nests were more 
than four feet from the ground—in fact, 
the majority average below that—I had an 
excellent oitijortnnity to pick out all the 
choice sets of eggs I wanted. There is a 
good deal of variation in both size and 
color, even in eggs coming out of the same 
nest. I think the first egg laid is always, 
or nearly always, the deejtest colored one. 
and the last the palest. Freshly laid eggs 
of this species range from a beautiful light 
green or bluish green tint (the shade is 
hard to des(;ribe exactly) to a pale greenish 
white, the shell in the lattei' variety pre¬ 
senting a mottled or spotted appearance, 
the coloring matter not being uniformly 
distributed on the shell. The largest egg 
selected out of several hundi-ed. measures 
