220 Northern Observations of Inland Birds 



falling it disgorged a quantity of fish, which evidently it 

 was taking home for its young. We may fairly safely 

 presume, then, that thirty miles is within the bird's radius 

 of travel while feeding a brood, and when we consider 

 the great amount of food that young herons — all fish- 

 eating birds are ravenous — require, it will at once be 

 seen that unless the parent birds distributed themselves 

 over a large area, local supplies would soon fail unless 

 very plentiful. 



I have said that the birds respect each other's fishing 

 rights, and that disagreements seldom occur, but that 

 they do sometimes take place, and have to be settled by 

 force of bill, the following observations seem to show. 



Reference has been made to a sandy-bottomed pond, 

 to one corner of which a certain heron was very partial. 

 This order of things has existed to my knowledge for 

 the last twenty years. The pond is about one mile below 

 Burnsall Village on the River Wharf e, fed by an overflow 

 arm of the river, and invariably dusk finds one or more 

 herons in its immediate vicinity. When a boy I one 

 day heard, on approaching the pond through the wood 

 that adjoins it, a terrific croaking and barking of heron 

 voices, and advancing silently I saw two adult herons 

 hopping grotesquely in pursuit of each other, and striking 

 at one another with their formidable bills. Unfortunately 

 they saw me immediately and flew off, still croaking 

 angrily. 



The following day or it may have been the same 

 evening, on approaching the same point, I again heard 

 a great hubbub of heron voices, and on my drawing 

 nearer no less than seven herons got up and flew away. 

 I remember that my youthful conclusion was that the 

 two individuals, having been unable to settle their dispute, 

 had called a committee meeting at which the question 

 of ownership was to be finally settled. 



