The attachment of the parent birds for their young is very beautiful to witness, yet this devotion, which should be their safeguard, is seized upon for their destruction, for so great is the instinct of protecting love they refuse to leave their young when danger is near, and are absolutely indifferent to their own safety.
Never shall I forget one sad incident which occurred while I was there.
Overhanging the water was an ancestral nest belonging to a family of egrets which had occupied it for some seasons.

Unlike the American human species, in whom local attachment is not largely developed, and who take a new house every moving day, the egret repairs and fixes over the old house year after year, putting in a new brace there, adding another stick here, to make it firm enough to bear the weight of the mother and the three young birds which always comprise the brood.
The three pale-blue eggs in this nest had been duly hatched, and the fond mother was now brooding over her darlings with every demonstration of maternal affection.

She was a beautiful creature with her graceful movement, her train of plumes, and her long neck gracefully curved.
The quick sharp boom, boom of the guns had been echoing through the swamp for some time, and the men were now coming nearer.

The efforts of the poor mother to shield her babies were piteous, but the hunters did not want them.

Their scant plumage is worthless for millinery purposes.