SECOND DAY. 15 
in a tree. Bombelles and Homeyer also appeared, but Brehm 
was missing. He had killed a Grey Heron when we began 
shooting, and as this species, which he already knew so well, 
had no longer any special interest for him, he had gone off 
to observe the “small stuff’” as he always called it, and had 
taken a line of his own in an opposite direction. We 
thought it better not to wait for him long, so went off on 
another ramble through the wood ; and as we were walking 
under the trees where I had made my first unsuccessful 
attempts at stalking the Night-Herons, one of these birds 
flew high over us, and Bombelles knocked it down with a 
good shot. It was a female, rather small, and not in very 
fine plumage. I now determined to kill a Night-Heron 
myself, and therefore looked out for the second pair, which I 
soon found, near the half-dried arm of the river already 
alluded to. 
They were circling round some trees, on whose tops they 
now and then settled, and as they seemed much warier than 
the Grey Herons it was no use attempting to get near them 
in the ordinary way, so, on reaching the trees which we 
thought they frequented, I sent Hodek and my jiger a 
certain distance back, and not until I had done this did one 
of the birds descend, and, slowly folding its wings, try to alight 
on a tree near me. My first shot merely wounded it, and it 
was only on receiving the second that it dropped into a thick 
silver poplar, and slowly fluttered down the trunk of the 
tree. 
Luckily it was a very fine specimen—an old male with its 
throat, breast, and underparts pure white, its back a beautiful 
silver-grey, its head black, ornamented with splendid long 
crest-feathers, and its beak and legs, when it was freshly 
killed, had a peculiar reddish tint which, according to Hodek, 
isa sign of great age. Some hours later they had become 
perceptibly paler, and now, alas! there is no longer the slightest 
