312 BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 



and its actions lively and prying; the varied nature of its 

 food in fact demands some degree of activity, fishes, water- 

 lizards, crabs, frogs, leeches, and insects being all partaken of 

 with equal avidity. 



It breeds in the months of November and December, and 

 generally in companies like the true Herons, the favourite 

 localities being the neighbourhood of swampy districts, where 

 an abundant supply of food is to be procured ; the branches 

 of large trees, points of shelving rocks, and caverns are equally 

 chosen as a site for the nest, which is rather large and flat, 

 and generally composed of crooked sticks loosely interwoven. 

 The eggs, which are usually three in number, are of a pale 

 green colour, and average two inches and five-eighths in length 

 by one inch and a half in breadth. 



So little difference exists in the colouring of the sexes, that 

 it is extremely difficult to distinguish the male from the fe- 

 male, and never with certainty unless dissection be resorted 

 to ; both have the three bcauttiful elongated occipital plumes, 

 the use of which except for ornament is not easily imagined. 

 The young, on the contrary, differ so greatly from the adult, 

 that they might readily be regarded as a distinct species. 



The adult has the crown of the head and the nape black;, 

 occipital plumes white ; back of the neck, all the upper sur- 

 face, wings and tail rich cinnamon-brown ; stripe over the 

 eye, sides of the face, neck, and all the under surface pure 

 white, the white and cinnamon gradually blending on the 

 sides of the neck ; bare space surrounding the eye greenish 

 yellow ; irides orange ; bill in some specimens black, slightly 

 tipped with yellow, in others black with a streak of greenish 

 yellow along the lower mandible, and a wash of the same hue 

 along the lower edge of the upper one ; legs and feet jonquil- 

 yellow ; claws black. 



The young bird of the first year has the whole of the upper 

 surface striated with buff and blackish brown, narrow and 

 lanceolate on the head and neck, broad and conspicuous on 



