from the vertical, we scrambled to the top, at times slipping, and often pulling ourselves up by the weeds, so steep it was. A misstep would have sent us rolling into the river below. In the face of the bluff squirrels had their homes, and we found the dwellings therein of two handsome big snowy owls, but they had wisely chosen them in places where the five degrees of slope was in under us and a crumbling of the sand meant a straight drop of fifty or sixty feet, so we left them with “requiescat in pace.” For a quarter of a mile we followed along the top of the bluff, watching the river and the tree tops below us. Flocks of ducks were flying up and down the river, quacking vigorously. Now and then a big, ugly “shack” rose from a stump and flapped across the river. Isles big and little and middlesized were dotted in the stream, all heavily covered with underbrush, an excellent refuge for the ducks in their nesting season a little later on. A big white pelican sat on a log watching its victims in the water. The river curves and bends and doubles on itself, and never goes straight for forty yards at a time. At a bend we came upon a scene that delighted our ornithological eyes. One hundred feet below us, in the tops of a clump of cottonwoods, was a heronry. Dozens of big, basket-like nests blackened the tree tops, and perched on the very topmost branches were dozens of long-legged, crooked-necked, great blue herons. As we came upon them they started up, flapping their wings, stretching out their necks and pulling in their legs behind them. Uttering cries like those of the seagulls, they flapped off and lit away upon the plains, but within sight of us, and seemed to be holding a consultation. We could see into the most of the nests, and they were all empty. It was a little too early for the birds to begin nesting, and they were evidently mating and perhaps deciding who should have first choice. Some nests looked like old family residences of many generations, for they had several stories and additions, porticos and dormer windows, so to speak, in abundance.