EARLY NESTS 15 



come on them standing silently in the woodland brooks in 

 the August heats, or scattered far apart over the mud-banks 

 of the estuary at low water. At most, they hunt together in 

 small parties. But a heronry in March and April is a 

 wonderful scene of noisy animation, as the gaunt birds 

 straddle and trumpet about the nests in the oak or fir tops, 

 and sail to and fro from the marsh. Herons with their long 

 legs seem singularly awkward and out of place among the 

 small boughs in a tree-top ; and they have probably adopted 

 this site for greater safety as marshes were drained, and they 

 gave up nesting in low bushes or among the reeds like 

 the bitterns. In Scotland and Ireland, where there are no 

 tall trees in otherwise suitable haunts, they will build on 

 rock-ledges or steep hillsides, like buzzards and hooded crows 

 in similar districts. When floods fill the landscape under a 

 grey March sky, and spring seems still far away, there is a 

 great fascination in the noisy life of the heronry, and the nests 

 full of large blue eggs. Herons' eggs soon lose their 

 delicate blue when blown, and become a dull sea-green ; and 

 this colour is reproduced in many illustrated works, though 

 it is not true to nature. 



Wandering pairs of herons occasionally settle down in 

 some wood near a stream or lake, and begin to build as late 

 as mid- April. The contrast with the normal habits of their 

 mind shows the advantage of a settled nesting-place. It is 

 the same with several other birds which build by pools and 

 streams. Moorhens which remain all the winter on a 

 sheltered pool often have eggs in early April, and sometimes 

 before the end of March ; but many of them are still 

 straggling from hedge to hedge across the country in 

 search of fit quarters in mid-April, and do not lay until 

 May. Moorhens are such an abundant species that there is 

 always an overflow from the favourite nesting-places ; and 



