THE HEKONS, BITTERNS, AND STOEKS. 225 



tomarily rest on one leg, with the other tucked away 

 in the line of the body, cannot to all appearance take 

 wing without first putting the other foot to the ground. 

 The food of the heron is by no means confined to fish, 

 but includes a variety of small mammals, as moles and 

 water-voles, young birds especially those of the moor- 

 hen frogs, lizards, and various shell-fish and insects. I 

 know a spot in west Hampshire whither to this day one 

 or more herons will resort of a July evening to sup off 

 young moorhens. As it is not improbable though the 

 verdict so far is "not proven" that the moorhen is at 

 times a greedy consumer of trout-ova, it may be conceded 

 in all charity that the heron thus atones in part for his 

 misdemeanours. 



I never to my knowledge witnessed a heron on the 

 water, though there is no reason why it should not swim 

 after a fashion, as recorded by some observers from time to 

 time. Herons, although often solitary when on the prowl, 

 are sociable during the breeding-time, which is very early 

 in the year ; and they nest in colonies, known as heronries, 

 which are nowadays more or less protected, if only through 

 the fact that their love of seclusion leads them to select 

 spots near private waters. Thus laws framed with a very 

 different object have operated most beneficially for these 

 birds. There are few large heronries in either Scotland 1 

 or Ireland, but the number in England is very consider- 

 able, some, as the small colony in Richmond Park near the 

 Penn pond, quite near the metropolis ; and it is doubtless 

 from these that those occasional herons hail whose bright 

 white figures, sailing high over the chimney-stacks, cause 

 the citizens to stare upward open-mouthed and the evening 

 papers to publish accounts of so unwonted an apparition. 

 Yet, considering the number of colonies within a very few 

 miles of the city boundaries, it is more than probable that 

 a very large number pass unrecorded over the greater colony 



1 Muirhead (Birds of Berwickshire, ii. 43) enumerates eight in Ber- 

 wickshire. 



