HERONS GOAT-STJCKEK. 83 



species of herons, you incidentally gave me great entertain- 

 ment in your description of the heronry at Cressy-hall, which 

 is a curiosity I never could manage to see. Fourscore nests 

 of such a bird on one tree, is a rarity which I would ride 

 half as many miles to have a sight of.* Pray be sure to tell 

 me in your next whose seat Cressy-hall is, and near what 

 town it lies.f I have often thought that those vast extents 

 of fens have never been sufficiently explored. If half-a- 

 dozen gentlemen, furnished with a good strength of water 

 spaniels, were to beat them over for a week, they would 

 certainly find more species. 



There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied 

 more than that of the caprimulgus (the goat-sucker), as it is 

 a wonderful and curious creature ; but I have always found, 

 that though sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I know 

 it does, yet in general it utters its jarring note sitting on a 

 bough ; and I have for many a half hour watched it as it 

 sat with its under mandible quivering, and particularly this 

 summer. It perches usually on a bare twig, with its head 

 lower than its tail, in an attitude well expressed by your 

 draughtsman in the folio British Zoology. This bird is most 

 punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close of day ; 

 so exactly, that I have known it strike up more than once 

 or twice just at the report of the Portsmouth evening gun, 

 which we can hear when the weather is still. It appears 

 to me past all doubt, that its notes are formed by organic 

 impulse, by the powers of the parts of its windpipe formed 

 for sound, just as cats pur. You will credit me, I hope, 

 when I assure you, that, as my neighbours were assembled 

 in an hermitage on the side of a steep hill where we drink 

 tea, one of these churn-owls came and settled on the cross 

 of that little straw edifice, and began to chatter, and con- 



* One of the finest heronries we now have is perhaps the one in Windsor 

 Great Park, taking into account the number of nests, and the noble and great 

 heighth of the beech-trees on which they are built. I once witnessed an 

 interesting fight at this heronry between a pair of ravens and some of the 

 herons. It was early in the spring, and the former birds evidently wanted 

 to take possession of one of the nests of the latter, who, however, did not 

 appear to wish for so dangerous a neighbour. The fight was continued in the 

 air for a length of time, but in the end the herons had the advantage and 

 beat off the ravens. ED. 



f Cressy-hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. 



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