Song Birds and Water Fowl 
ing its habits as minutely as those of other birds. 
The effect of such a huge creature (standing 
about four feet high), when on the wing, is very 
singular. Without the impressive manner—one 
might almost say, Aawteur—of the eagle, it has 
a filling presence that is very striking. Flying 
is the eagle’s vocation, but only an avocation of 
this heron. The lonesome marsh seemed only 
more silent and lonely after a view of this its 
presiding genius, hovering about in its wild, 
mute, and suspicious manner, then floating off 
half moodily where it could maintain, more un- 
observed, its noiseless, melancholy reign over its 
solitary domain. On my way up the creek I 
asked a man whom I found couching in the 
grass for ducks, in regard to herons. He re- 
plied, without the least animation, that he saw 
three or four of them that morning; but one 
meant more to me than three or four to him. 
It could be seen at a glance that he had no ‘‘ eyes 
in his heart’’ for that stately and picturesque 
creature ; he had, poor soul, only a capacity for 
ducks. 
In a close view of the ‘‘ great blue,’’ when 
flying, there is something rather comical in its 
budget of angles—long dangling legs, out- 
stretched serpentine neck, thin body and broad 
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