Page:Condor12(4).djvu/5

 July, 1910 SOME COLORADO NIGHT tlERON N)'I'IS 11.5 the young, and it would be interesting to know where the parent birds found enough of these animals to supply the demands of all those ravenous young mouths. The old birds exhibited quite a little concern over our presence, but they were at all times quite wary, and did not come within several hundred yards of the nests while we were there. On June 23, of the same year, we discovered a small colony of these birds nesting in some thickets of scrub willow which had grown up along the shore of a large reservoir, but which owing to the high water were now partially submerged, and were some forty yards out in the lake from the water's edge. In this colony there were twenty-eight nests containing eggs, mostly sets of three and four, altho we found two sets of five eggs each. The nests varied in hight from two to ten feet above the water-level, but the majority were-from six to eight feet up. The water was little more than knee deep, but there were only four nests that could be reacht without climbing. i-'"- '-"' Fig. 32. A FI,OATIITG ITEST O1 TI-IE ITIGIt'r ItEROIT, MAY i8, 19{)7 The nests were composed entirely of sticks ranging in length from four inches ' to eighteen inches, and from one-eighth to one-fourth of an inch in diameter. They *Ere slightly but uniformly cupt, but were very irregular in contour one way than the other. They were all bilt in crotches, either main or lateral, and were held in place by numerous small twigs. These nests averaged less than half the size of the nests in the colony in the rushes, and were much inferior to them in construction. In nearly every instance the eggs could be seen from the ground, thru the bottom of the nest. _ The birds were quite tame, sometimes alighting within twenty feet of us, and a few stayed on their nests until we had approacht to within ten or fifteen feet. Many of the birds circled in the air above the nests, while we were examining them, occasionally giving voice to a low, guttural cluck not unlike the cluck of .. a hen.
 * ' owing to the varying length of the sticks, and in nearly every instance were longer