Identifier: birdlore141912nati (find matches)
Title: Bird lore
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: National Committee of the Audubon Societies of America National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals National Audubon Society
Subjects: Birds Birds Ornithology
Publisher: New York City : Macmillan Co.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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H a oo 5^ The White Egrets 63 five colonies of water-birds were examined, and innumerable feeding-groundsof Herons were visited. In all this stretch of territory—two hundred miles inlength—less than a dozen white Egrets were found; whereas, in the same regioneleven years before, the writer had found the birds plentiful, and in placesvery abundant. There are two species of plume-bearing white Egrets in America. Thelarge one (Herodias egretta) is a beautiful long-legged, long-necked bird, stand-ing between three and four feet in height, and the Snowy Heron (Egretta can-
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SNOWY EGRETPhotographed by P. B. Philipp didissima), of much shorter stature. From the back of the former are obtainedthe long, straight plumes, and from the latter are taken the short, curved ones^known to the trade as the cross aigrette. Both species are normally foundin the same territory and under very similar conditions. They formerly bredfrom Oregon and New York on the north, south through Mexico and thenorthern Central America to Patagonia and Chile. Their range, however,in the United States has been greatly restricted. One small colony is reportedto be still in existence in eastern Oregon, and it is just possible that there areone or more groups of birds in southern California. The most northern nest- 64 Bird - Lore ing-place on the Atlantic Coast is in Xorth Carolina, down close to the south-ern boundary line. Large areas in Florida, where, in years gone b), the birdswere more abundant than in any other place in the L^nited States, are nowdevoid of either species, except now

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