24 AT A HERONRY NEAR LONDON 
the bird was, the instinct of self-preservation 
had not yet left it ; for it made frequent and 
desperate lunges at us with its beak, uttering 
weak squawks each time. Despite my warn- 
ings to Ted, his nose had a narrow escape from 
defacement. He picked up the bird, quite an 
armful, to examine it, when it immediately 
struck with its beak at the most prominent 
part of his physiognomy, and just missed 
it by half an inch. Being held, the bird 
could not quite reach it. Lucky Ted!—It 
might have been his eye. There was only 
one thing to do with the poor dying cripple, 
and that the keeper did mercifully. It does 
not seem that the parents here tend the young 
if they fall to the ground, and they perish 
there from starvation (the bird just mentioned 
was miserably thin), if they are too young 
as yet to fly and get out into the open, or 
aloft again into the nest, or into the tree tops. 
This apathy, or cruelty shall we call it, on 
of snow had fallen a few days before, and perhaps the 
birds had perished from cold and the parents had ejected 
them to make room for a second clutch of eggs. 
