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Cranes and Egrets in Douglas County, Oregon

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Cranes and Egrets in Douglas County, Oregon.-During the summer seasons of 1945 and 1946, I ha.ve had the opportunity of observing and photographing in Douglas County, Oregon, two species which, to my knowledge, have not previously been recorded from there. They were the Sandhill Crane (Grus umuzdensis) and the Common Egret (Casmerodilrs albus), Both were seen in a swampy meadow near the south shore of Diamond Lake, at an elevation of 5,162 feet.

A pair of adult cranes was seen in the months of June and July, 1945. The birds were quite tame, usually allowing the observer to approach to about thirty yards before taking flight. I believed them to be nesting because of their apparent reluctance to leave the west end of the meadow and because of the prolonged disappearance of one of the birds on some occasions. The nest was not found, nor were cranes seen there in 1946.

On August 18, 1946, I returned to the same meadow and saw a flock of eleven Common Egrets and one Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias). I took several still photographs of the egrets at that time. The egrets apparently were merely passing through, for on August 25, 1946, I searched ali of the suitable meadows at the south end of the lake without seeing them again.

Gabrielson and Jewett (Birds of Oregon, 1940: 229) state the breading range of the Sa.ndhill Crane in Oregon to be Klamath, Lake, and Harney counties. They further state that there are records from outside of the breeding range only for April, September, and October. The same authors (09. cit.: 107) state that the.Common Egret is a summer resident of Klamath and Ha.rney counties. The only other records reported by them are those of vagrants from Multnomah and Lake counties.-VERNON E. THATCHER, Medford, Oregon, October 11,1946.

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