Page:The birds of America, Volume 6.djvu/178

132 breadth, toward the lower part enlarged to 4 twelfths, finally contracted to 3 twelfths. The rings are 252, with 4 terminal dimidiate rings. The right bronchus has 19, the left 20 half rings. The muscles are in all respects as in Jlrdea Occident alls.

GREAT AMERICAN WHITE EGRET.

-VArdea Egretta, Gmel.

PLATE CCCLXX.— Male.

The truly elegant Heron which now comes to be described, is a constant resident in the Floridas; it migrates eastward sometimes as far as the State of Massachusetts, and up the Mississippi to the city of Natchez, and is never seen far inland, by which I mean that its rambles into the interior seldom extend to more than fifty miles from the sea-shore, unless along the course of our great rivers. On my way to Texas, in the spring of 1837, I found these birds in several places along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and on several of the islands scattered around that named Galveston, where, as well as in the Floridas, 1 was told that they spend the winter. The Great American Egret breeds along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and our Atlantic States, from Galveston Island in Texas to the borders of the State of New York, beyond which, although stragglers have been seen, none, in so far as I can ascertain, have been known to breed. In all low districts that are marshy and covered with large trees, on the margins of ponds or lakes, the sides of bayous, or gloomy swamps covered with water, are the places to which it generally resorts during the period of reproduc- tion; although I have in a few instances met with their nests on low trees, and on sandy islands at a short distance from the mainland. As early as December I have observed vast numbers congregated, as if for the purpose of making choice of partners, when the addresses of the males were paid in a very curious and to me interesting manner. Near the plantation of John Bulow, Esq. in East Florida, I had the pleasure of witnessing this sort of tournament or dress-ball from a place of concealment not more than a hun- dred yards distant. The males, in strutting round the females, swelled their