THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 9 
Civilization. . . . But never while it maintained a normal level did the 
place distinguish itself as a haven for birds. . . 
Frank Amos brought the news: he had seen them from the train— 
fully half a hundred of the large white herons. It was six o’clock in the 
evening, but Long Lake was only four miles away; I wheeled out my 
much-abused road racer and left at once. 
‘The seasoned old hunter was right; singly and in pairs egrets began 
to pass overhead as I neared my destination, all flying east. It could not be 
far now; I cut across a narrow field, threw the bike over a rail fence and 
began to follow the tracks. A few minutes later I came abreast of a small 
woodlot, and suddenly in the hollow beyond I saw it! “There was a brief 
impression of the dried-up pond, scarcely a hundred yards across,—of a 
sea of puddles alive with killdeers and yellowlegs. But that which im- 
mediately arrested all attention was the jagged white line of egrets that 
graced a long flat where the last of the open water lay. | 
The barren insignificance of the place was at once evident and I won- 
dered what possible inducement could bring these wary birds to assemble 
there.- Then I understood; halfway down the enbankment and all but 
lost in the weed growth, a rambling barbed wire fence struggled. Fences 
meant privacy, and privacy—in this case I thought—meant protection. 
Apparently this was a family affair with the egret assemblage the object 
of interest; there were half a dozen great blue herons and a score of night 
herons and bitterns loitering about on the flats;—and curiously enough the 
egrets held solemnly aloof from fcod-seeking while all the others searched 
diligently for whatever the pond offered. I was surprised at my inability 
to pick a single little blue heron out of the flock. While I was absorbed 
in the senatorial calm of the honored guests, a thickset little German 
who lived across the tracks joined me; his name, he said, was Krenschen. 
We stood there while the sun sank low,—and the old fellow, waxing 
genial, began to recount a history of the place ;—how they had fought the 
closing of the pond by the railroad, and how they had lost. No, he had 
never seen the white herons before this year,—all through August they 
had been using the pond, coming in greatest numbers at evening. Never 
in his memory had the place attracted so much outside attention. Locally 
it was famous only for the size of its turtles. Krenschen wanted to know 
where they came from,—why they were here. I told him they lived mostly 
in the Gulf states, and brought their families north for a kind of vacation 
in late summer; they were due to return soon. 
From every direction now the egrets began to arrive, seemingly con- 
verging from all the lakes; thirty feet over the pond each one set his wings 
in exactly the same way, the black legs dropped forward, arresting progress, 
and he floated easily to rest in the midst of that ever-increasing throng 
on the flat. Counting the outstretched necks there were seventy-four birds. 
As the glowing sun drops slowly beyond the verge of the world, the 
long dark shadows stalk out of the woods to the westward. Slowly they 
