THE-CO.B.R Volume VIII Hatch-April I906 Number2 Herons at Home BY WILLIAM L. FINLEY WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY IIERMAN T. BOHLMAN IFTEEN miles below Portland, Oregon, in the heart of the fir forest, is a village of two hundred houses. It has an area of about three acres. Every home is a sky-scraper. Not a single house is less than a hundred and thirty feet up, and some are a hundred and sixty feet high. The inhabitants are feathered fishers. They hunt the waterways of the Columbia and the Willamette for miles. Each owns his own claim, and there's never a dispute as to possession. It takes the biggest reserve of nerve and muscle to reach this village, but one may sit on the wooded hillside far below and watch the li[e there in full swing. From two to five brush-heap houses, the size of a washtub, are carefully balanced and securely fastened on the top limbs of each tree. Gaunt, long-legged citizens stand about the airy doorways and gossip in hoarse croaks. Residents are con- tinually coming and going, some flapping in from the feeding ground with a craw full of fish and frogs, others sweeping down the avenues between the pointed firs with a departing guttural squawk. This is the home of a colony of great blue herons. The great blue heron or "crane" is one of the picturesque sights of every fish pond and along the bank of every river and lake in the country. I look for him, along the shallow sandbars and sloping banks as I look forthe background of green trees. He is always the solitary fisher. He is the bit of life that draws the whole to a focus. Watch him, and he stands as motionless as a stick. He is patient. A minnow or frog swims past and there is a lightning flash of that pointed bill as he pins it a foot below the surface. 'Disturb him, and he deliber- ately spreadsa pa. ir of wings that fans six feet of air, and dangles his long legs to the next stand just out of range.
