COMMON HERON. 143 
by stalking amongst them when asleep on the “banks” 
during the day, and from its acute sense of hearing, 
giving the alarm long before the fowl near the “ pipes” 
are conscious of any danger. To the punt and marsh 
eunner, also, it is equally obnoxious from the same 
cause, its loud “frank,” “frank,” as it slowly flaps over 
the ooze, being evidently received as a “ caution” by 
all other wild fowl. Of fresh water fish the heron is 
particularly partial to pike, and in Norfolk, says Mr. 
Lubbock, “gets half its subsistence from the fry of this 
fish ; those which were taken by the falcons at Did- 
lington had always small pike in their maws.” On 
one occasion Mr. Newcome saw a heron plunge head 
first* into a marsh “dyke,” some five or six feet deep, 
and emerge again with a pike in its beak, weighing 
from a pound and a-half to two pounds, which he secured 
directly after the bird had killed it. He has likewise 
taken a pike of that size from the stomach of a heron, 
which had been seized by his hawk as soon as it rose. 
Fish, however, compose a portion only of a heron’s 
food, as I have ascertained repeatedly by an examination 
of the contents of the stomach. In some, balls of fur, 
as much as two inches in diameter, have attested their 
extreme partiality for water rats, these pellets being 
thrown up after the manner of hawks and owls; and 
mingled with this mass have been also found the slimy 
remains and small white bones of the frog, fish scales, 
portions of eels, and fragments of water insects, such as 
water-beetles and boat-flies. In confinement it is well 
known to devour small birds, feathers and all, and on 
the broads and rivers, the young coots and waterhens 
* This habit is also alluded to by Messrs. Sheppard and 
Whitear, who state that a heron, observed by them standing on 
the steep bank of a river “in darting at a fish, precipitated himself 
into the water, but was out again in an instant with its prey.” 
