PURPLE HERON. 175 



The Purple Heron is partial to still waters and reedy 

 marshes, and in Europe its breeding-places are, as a rule, 

 exceedingly difficult of access, being generally situated in 

 the midst of dense masses of reeds, where wading is almost 

 impossible. Mr. Alfred Crowley, who visited the Naarden 

 Meer, near Amsterdam, on the 27th of May, 1884, describes 

 the nests as placed about three feet above the water, and 

 made by bending down twelve or fifteen reeds to form a 

 platform, on which some smaller pieces were arranged cross- 

 wise, and this agrees with the Editor's experiences in Spain. 

 In Ceylon, however, Colonel Legge and Mr. Nevill found 

 this species breeding on trees, and forming flat but rather 

 bulky nests. The eggs are usually tbree in number, and are 

 of a bluish-green colour, somewhat paler and smaller than 

 those of the Common Heron : average measurements 2-2 by 

 1-5 in. 



In its habits the Purple Heron is more like the Bittern 

 than the Heron last described, and it is shy and, to a con- 

 siderable extent, crepuscular, and even nocturnal, in its time 

 of feeding. From the thinness of the long snake-like neck, 

 the birds, even when numerous, are with difficulty distin- 

 guished when they are standing in a reed-margined lake, 

 nearly up to the belly in water, their bodies, in the shim- 

 mering sun-light, exactly resembling tussocks of reed. The 

 flight is similar to that of the Common Heron, but the note 

 is more guttural. The food of this species consists of small 

 mammalia, reptiles, fishes, and aquatic insects. Mr-. Steven- 

 son found that two birds which he dissected were extremely 

 fat ; the stomach of one contained two good-sized roach — 

 one quite five inches long : — in the other was merely a dry 

 pellet of mouse-hair. 



The adult bird has the beak yellow, darkest in colour at 

 the base ; the lore greenish-yellow ; irides bright lemon ; the 

 top of the head, the occiput, and the long occipital plumes, 

 glossy black, tinged with purple ; cheeks and sides of the 

 neck fawn-colour, with descending streaks of bluish-black; 

 back and wing-coverts dark slate-grey ; the elongated fila- 

 mentous dorsal feathers, chestnut; tail-feathers bluish-grey. 



