THROUGH WILD EUROPE 169 



distant localities on false information. Once they 

 took me to an Albanian village, only to find a 

 Stork's nest, and were very aggrieved because I 

 refused to pay. After all, there was a Stork's nest 

 in the village, within 100 yards of where I was 

 living, but I suppose the more distant one to 

 them seemed better value for the money, and a 

 better excuse to make me pay up. 



At last, one day (May 27), after many disappoint- 

 ments such as I have described, and many failures, 

 I succeeded in finding a nesting colony of Ardea 

 alba. I had been wading all day searching several 

 thick reed-beds. The day was a very hot one, and 

 I was thoroughly exhausted and done up, so much 

 so that several times I had been obliged to sit down 

 in the water and rest on clumps of reeds. Hardly 

 able to drag myself along, I was on my way slowly 

 back to the boat where I had left wine and food, 

 when suddenly the unmistakable grunting of breed- 

 ing Herons attracted my attention. On firing my 

 revolver up got several Common Herons, but with 

 them were some Great White Herons. Fatigue, 

 hunger, and thirst, were all forgotten, and I plunged 

 again into the reeds with renewed strength. The 

 water was waist-deep — sometimes over — but luckily 

 the bottom was fairly firm. Each step required the 

 exercise of my whole strength and weight to force a 

 passage through the thick reeds. For over an hour 



