In Heron 
with the present species on the Magdalen 
Islands. The bittern sits “close”; espe- 
cially on rainy days I have been near enough 
to them on their nests almost to touch them 
without their starting, until our glances met ; 
then there would be a wild scramble. They 
sit motionless, with bill pointed up, making 
themselves part of the surroundings. 
Almost every one who goes much afield 
has seen the green heron jump out of a 
ditch or pond-hole with shrill scream. Not 
so many have seen the nest and bluish eges 
in some low tree or bush of a cedar, alder, or 
other swampy tangle. There these herons 
breed, sometimes only a single pair, but just 
as often half a dozen or more, not close to- 
gether, but near enough for sociability. If 
intruded upon when there are young, I 
know of no heron that will make greater fuss 
and outery. 
I never realized more acutely the timidity 
of herons as a class than when I first tried to 
photograph one on its nest—a green heron, 
it happened to be. The nest was on a low 
alder, about four feet, over water more than 
knee deep. Setting the camera up on the 
i 
be 
? 
Haunts 201 
tripod, about six feet away, trimming it with 
branches and attaching a long thread, I hid 
on a hummock sixty feet off. After forty 
minutes of flying about anxiously, [ saw the 
little mother sneak along the alder branches, 
¢limbing or hopping from one to the other, 
jerking her funny little tail up and down in 
After 
long hesitation she finally settled on hei 
a most ridiculous, nervous fashion. 
eggs, just for an instant, when, with a sud- 
den spring, she was gone. She had seen the 
movement of the thread, as I had begun to 
eather in the slack. 
The least bittern is not much larger than 
Like these, it 
enjoys slipping through the tangles of the 
bog, where I have often found its nest, a 
frail little platform suspended between the 
stems of reeds and buoyed up by the dead 
undergrowth above the water, with its four 
or five faint blue eggs. At times several 
nests will be quite near together, but it is 
rarely that one can see the owner, unless by 
silently approaching in a boat, when, taken 
by surprise, she will sometimes fly. 
Florida is still the heron paradise, though 
the sora, or other small rail. 
Louisiana Heron Approaching Nest in Florida Rookery—Telephoto. 
