42 THE HOME-LIFE OF 



stealthy steps. There was no hurry or disorder, but each 

 seemed bent on some mission and passed quietly along. 



Perhaps it was the rapid and complete changes — first 

 the harsh cries and excitement of the angry Herons 

 on their colony being invaded, then the long stillness, 

 followed by the wild and discordant concert, and now 

 this silent host wandering through the undergrowth, 

 that made the whole thing seem more like a dream or a 

 fairy play than a scene from living nature. 



' How long this silent procession might have continued 

 I do not know, for just then the alighting of an old 

 Heron announced the possibility of dinner, and each 

 young one, fearful lest it might be his mother which had 

 returned, had but one thought and wish — to regain his 

 nest. Now, in the excitement, they again found their 

 voices, and used them lustily, too. It is an easy matter 

 to fall out of a nest, but some of the smaller ones now 

 found it a much more difficult task getting back. 



I was very curious to know how all these scattered 

 chicks would find their right nests again, and I may here 

 say that none were noticed on the ground looking as 

 though they were lost, nor were any seen to chmb 

 unintentionally to wrong nests. This speaks very highly 

 for their sagacity and sense of direction, for we must 

 remember that they were moving amongst a forest of 

 stems, all practically alike, up only one of which could 

 they reach home. True, they occasionally climbed up 

 the wrong branch of the right bush, and their look of 

 bewilderment on reaching the top and finding no nest 

 there was most amusing, as were the struggles of those 

 which doing the same thing, saw their home a few feet 

 away and spent an hour or more in vainly trying to find 

 a way across the intervening space. 



From the ready way in which they found their right tree 

 again, and especially from their marked and uniform be- 

 haviour when on the ground, it was obviousthat these terres- 

 trial wanderings must be of fairly frequent occurrence. 



