418 
Mr. F. C. Selous on 
feet deep, and all pushing together. At length, after a 
couple of hours’ hard work, we pushed our boat into a 
little open lagoon in the middle of the cane-brake and at once 
saw that we were close upon the nesting-site of a great 
bird-colony. Glossy Ibises, Night-Herons, and Little Egrets 
rose in clouds from the reeds, just beyond the lagoon, 
and among them were a few pairs of Great White Egrets 
and Squacco Herons, but there, did not appear to be any 
Common or Purple Herons in the colony. After crossing 
the lagoon, we worked the boat for some twenty yards 
further into the reeds, and then saw numbers of nests in 
front of us. Two nests, with eggs somewhat larger than 
those of either the Common or the Purple Heron, were rather 
bulky, and were built on broken-down reeds, some three 
feet above the water. These two nests were very like nests 
of the Purple Heron which I have seen in Hungary, but as 
we saw no Purple Herons here, and as we did see several 
pairs of Great White Herons, I feel sure that they belonged 
to the latter bird. One of these nests contained two, and 
the other four eggs. All the other nests, those of the 
Glossy Ibis, Little Egret, Night-Heron, and Squacco Heron, 
were built of reeds right down on the surface of the water. 
The Little Egrets had been, I Jthink, the first to lay; at 
least all the nests that had full clutches were, I believe, 
those of Little Egrets. The Ibises and Night-PIerons were 
only just beginning to lay. The dark greeny blue eggs of the 
former were of course unmistakable, and those nests which 
we took to belong to Night-Herons were, many of them, 
empty, while none of them contained more than two eggs; 
these eggs appearing to me to be all somewhat larger than 
the full clutches which, I think, belonged to the Little Egrets. 
We found two nests of the Squacco Heron with eggs, and 
one Pygmy Cormorant’s nest with four eggs. After collecting 
and marking a few r eggs of each species we set out on our 
return journey, and, getting back to the gipsy encampment 
by 5 o’clock, reached Sakizbounou just as it was growing 
dusk. The gipsies told us that the Wild Swans alw r ays nested 
in the centre of one of the little open lagoons in the great 
