16 FIFTEEN DAYS ON THE DANUBE. 
trace of the red colour to be seen. I was much delighted at 
adding such a splendid bird to our collection on the first day’s 
shooting, for this Night-Heron was one of the gems of the 
spoils which we brought home. 
Immediately after having been so fortunate as to shoot 
this long-desired bird, I knocked down another Grey Heron 
from one of the nests close by, and then waded back across 
the channel to join the other sportsmen. By the advice of 
Count Zichy, we now determined to leave the herons, as 
they had become very shy and suspicious, and to pay a 
murderous visit to a breeding-place of Cormorants, at no 
great distance, while both the Hodeks, guided by one of the 
keepers, went back to the vessel with the slain herons, in 
order that the birds might not lie too long in the hot sun. 
We at first struck into the above-mentioned footpath, and 
soon reached a luxuriantly green thicket, where the high 
wood of the heronry gradually disappeared, the trees kept 
getting smaller and the undergrowth denser. Our way then 
led us past a nursery-garden, and across a little meadow to 
the bank of a large arm of the Danube, which bounded one 
side of the island. There Sand-Martins darted about the 
steep, crumbling banks, and Mallards rose noisily from the 
water. The thickets now grew more straggling, and we 
came to a pasture only studded with a few young trees, most 
of them chestnuts. This pasture was bordered by fields, and 
beyond them was a low wood, with a clump of very high 
elms at its further extremity. These were the trees occupied 
by the Cormorants’ nests, above which we could see the heavy 
forms of the birds looking like black spots. 
As we walked over these fields along the water’s edge, a 
wonderful picture presented itself. On one side was the high 
rich green wood of the heronry, girt with a seemingly 
impenetrable fringe of dense thickets ; above it circled the 
frightened herons, some of them flying so high up that, with 
