In Heron 
so that it could not fly. It took to the water, 
and I followed (swimming). As [—crazy 
young fool—overtook it, and, exulting, was 
about to seize my prize, it suddenly shot 
out a terrific lunge of the great bill, intended 
for my right eye. Had I not succeeded in 
dodging, the outcome would have been very 
serious for me. Then followed a fight, which, 
though I finally came off victor, I have no 
desire ever to repeat. 
For many years it was one of my ornitho- 
Haunts 195 
off in the trackless spruce forest, there was 
certainly a small colony. We saw the great 
birds flying in and out, and a woodsman 
had once found the spot, where there were 
about a dozen nests, all igh up on one 
enormous spruce tree. After a hard tramp, 
driven almost frantic by the mosquitoes, we 
were glad to get out, without having seen a 
heron. 
In the North the elusive bird proved too 
much for me: but in Florida I found a few 
Young Great Blue Heron. 
logical ambitions to find a nest of the great 
blue heron. Watching one feeding, when it 
flew I would try to trace its line of flight: 
but this proved hopeless. 
tions were to no purpose. Once, up in 
northern Nova Scotia, I thought I had sue- 
ceeded. People told me that there was a 
rookery on a certain island, but a trip there 
proved it to be only a roost after the breed- 
ing season. In the same region, somewhere 
Various expedi- 
scattered nests, with young, about twenty 
feet from the ground, on the tops of low 
willow trees on an island in a great morass. 
In Virginia I had the best suecess, where, 
near the shore of Chesapeake Bay, I was 
shown a fine rookery. On enormous pines, 
growing in a forest along the edge of a 
lonely pond, where eagles and ospreys also 
bred, averaging over one hundred feet from 
the ground, were from fifty to a hundred 
