AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 121 



166. NIGHT HERON. 



Nycticorcuv yriseus. 



I grieve to say that I am guilty of the blood of the 

 only one of this species that has, so far as I am 

 aware, fallen a victim to the greed of man in our 

 county. I have no valid excuse whatever to offer in 

 extenuation of my offence, but will ask my readers to 

 defer their sentence upon it till they have finished 

 this article. We were trying for an otter on July 4, 

 1868, wdth a few couples of the Fitzwilliam hounds, 

 and drawing do\>'n stream from below Aldwincle in 

 the direction of Wadenhoe, the hounds and huntsman 

 on the proper left, and several friends with me on the 

 other bank of the river, when, as the hounds crashed 

 into a coppice of tall alders, I was suddenly aware 

 that one of several Herons that flew from these trees 

 was not of our common species. I kept my eyes 

 upon the stranger, who settled on a dead bougli in 

 another riverside coppice at a short distance. I 

 stopped the hounds and hunters, and, making a detour, 

 approached sufficiently close to make certain that 

 the bird in question was an adult Night Heron ; here 

 this story ought to have come to an end, but alas ! I 

 was a British bird-collector, and the Night Heron 

 having flown back to the covert from Avhich it was 

 originally disturbed, I sent to Wadenhoe for a gun, 

 despatched a man to put the bird out towards me, 

 and ruthlessly shot it. The specimen proved to be a 

 female in very fair plumage, and with evident signs 

 of having been engaged in incubation. In spite of 

 subsequent diligent search in every likely and many 

 unlikely spots, we failed to find the nest or any trace of 



