498 BRITISH BIRDS. 
Away from its nest the Night-Heron is a very silent bird; but if the 
colony in which it breeds be invaded, its cries are louder than those of any 
of its companions. As you approach the nests a lazy quak is heard, when 
you are in sight of the bird you hear a more anxious ca-wak, and when 
really alarmed the notes that rapidly follow each other might be compared 
to the sound that a giant would make if he gargled. 
The Night-Heron is almost exclusively a swamp-feeding bird, and the 
stomachs of those I have examined contained freshwater crustacea and the 
tender shoots of water-plants. It also feeds on small fish, small frogs and 
tadpoles, water-beetles, the larvee of dragonflies and other insects, worms 
and snails. 
In the valley of the Danube this species is the earliest Heron to breed. 
Both the colonies which I visited were in flooded forests of pollard willows. 
On the 12th of June some of the eggs of the Night-Heron were hatched, 
whilst many of those of the Little Egret and Squacco Heron were highly 
incubated ; but nearly all the eggs of the Common Heron were fresh. In 
Ceylon Capt. Legge found eggs of the Night-Heron in March ; in Cash- 
mere Brooks found it breeding in April and May; but in the plains of 
North-west India Hume obtained eggs as late as the 21st of August. In 
India and Ceylon, as well as in China, it breeds in trees; but it is said 
sometimes to make its nest on the bent-down reeds in treeless marshes, 
though the evidence of this is not very reliable*. A visit to one of the 
great breeding-places of the Herons is an event in the life of an ornitho- 
logist. I have already described the colonies on the Danube, where I 
found the Night-Heron breeding in company with the Little Egret and 
Squacco Heron, and extract the following narrative of a visit to a similar 
colony, somewhat later in the year, from Barkley’s ‘ Bulgaria before the 
War’ :— 
“For a long time it had been a puzzle to me where the various waders 
&ec. built their nests; for though the birds were to be seen at every few 
yards along the muddy banks of the river, or slowly flying over the 
marshy islands, I had as yet never discovered their nesting-ground. At 
last, one fine afternoon in the early summer, I accompanied a friend in a 
small boat on an excursion a few miles down the river below Rustchuk. 
On approaching a small island which was covered with water about a foot 
deep, we heard, amidst the dense willow-thicket which overspread it, a 
noise as if the inhabitants of Purgatory had made their home there, and 
were having an unusually bad time of it. Pushing our small boat into a 
* My friend Mr. Sennett informs me that he found the Night-Heron breeding on 
broken-down rushes in a great heronry in the salt-marshes in Texas. The American 
bird is, however, on an average larger than ours, and is regarded by American ornitho- 
logists as subspecifically distinct, under the name of Nycticorax grisea var. nevia, It 
generally breeds in trees. 
