It was with a delightful sense of companionship with the birds that I observed them going and coming, feeding their young, or resting after the night’s labors, wholly undisturbed by my presence. Almost I seemed to be a guest of the rookery, and I longed for power to interpret the notes and actions of the birds so abundant about me. [Illustration: 42. Young Night Herons leaving nest. Nesting tree shown in No. 38.] So I should like to have passed the day with them, becoming for the time being a Heron myself; but the desire to picture the birds was stronger than the wish to be a Heron, and the situation was considered from the standpoint of the bird photographer. The rookery proved to be a difficult subject. No single view would convey an adequate idea of its appearance, and I therefore selected representative tree tops and photographed their nests and young birds. A visit to a neighboring pond resulted in securing, with the aid of a telephoto, a picture^{40} of two adult birds feeding well out of gunshot, and with the assistance of climbers I reached the upper branches of a tree some seventy feet in height containing five nests whose contents ranged from eggs to nearly grown young. With the ball-and-socket clamp the camera was fastened to favoring limbs, and after three hours’ work several satisfactory pictures of young in the nest and on the adjoining branches were secured.^{41–43} Although well able to defend themselves, the young assumed no such threatening attitudes as the American Bittern strikes when alarmed, from which perhaps we may argue that they are happily ignorant of the dangers which beset their ground-nesting relative. [Illustration: 43. Young Night Herons on branches near nest, seventy feet from the ground.] As the sun crept upward and the last fishers returned, the calls of both old and young birds were heard less and less often, and by ten o’clock night had fallen on the rookery and the birds were all resting quietly. Four o’clock in the afternoon was evidently early morning, and at this hour the birds first began to leave the rookery for their fishing grounds. Some went toward the north, others to the south, east or west; each bird no doubt having clearly in mind some favorite shore, perhaps a dozen miles away, where he before had had good luck a-fishing; and of all the varied phases of rookery life the thought of this regular nightly expedition of hundreds of winged fishers, is to me the most attractive. Our largest Heron as well as our largest bird is the Great Blue. “Crane” he is popularly called; but, aside from other differences, the bird’s habit of folding its neck back on its shoulders, when on the wing, will distinguish it from true Cranes, who fly with neck extended to the utmost.