THE NIGHT HERON 



Nycticorax griseus 



Upper plumage dark to black, with blue-green reflections ; 

 two long plumes from head ; white wings and tail grey ; 

 under-parts a grey buff-white ; eyes crimson ; young are dull 

 grey and brown, mottled and spotted. Total length, 21 

 inches. 



This is a really common bird, but being nocturnal 

 it is not very often noticed. Many a sont or palm 

 tree that people walk under may have four or five 

 sitting so quietly among the branches that they are 

 not observed ; but towards evening — before the 

 sun has actually dropped behind the horizon — they 

 begin to waken up ; and curious " squawk, squawk " 

 calls, then flappings about as they move from branch 

 to branch, will be heard, till, as the afterglow begins, 

 they all start mounting into the air and taking great 

 circles round and round, or away in a bee-line to 

 some favourite feeding-ground, where they remain 

 all night, and return at dawn to their roosting- 

 places. In some trees in the garden of the old 

 Luxor Hotel, there is, as I write in 1909, a colony 

 — two of the trees they roost in hang over the 

 very carriage roadway up to the station, — noisy and 



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