152 COMMON NIGHT-HERON. 



not know of any instance of its breeding with us. 

 In habits they are nocturnal, frequenting marshes, 

 where brush or rank herbage abounds, and there 

 skulking in the day time ; feeding in the evening, 

 twilight, or in light nights, and supporting themselves 

 chiefly on fish or aquatic reptiles. Several instances 

 of their capture in the English counties occur ; but, 

 in Scotland, when the pair which were killed at 

 Hirsel, the seat of the Earl of Home, were presented 

 to the Edinburgh Museum, they were accounted 

 great rarities. That nobleman, who is a keen sports- 

 man, has several large preserves of water on his 

 grounds, skirted with willows and tall reeds ; and, 

 we believe, that it was on the margin of one of these 

 where the pair of birds was shot. A specimen in 

 our own collection was obtained just after it had 

 been skinned, and had been killed a day or two 

 previously on the banks of the Cluden, a tributary 

 to the river Nith in Dumfries-shire. In Ireland, 

 Mr. Thompson records its capture twice ; one, a 

 specimen sent from Letterkenny to Dublin ; the 

 second, in the plumage of the young bird, was killed 

 in the county of Armagh, and was presented to the 

 Belfast Museum. 



In North America, the Night-Heron, or as it is 

 there -termed, the " Qua Bird," is in some parts 

 migratory; during the season of incubation it is 

 gregarious, and breeds together in the inundated 

 swamps, the stagnant pools near the rice plantations, 

 and on the low islands clothed with evergreen trees. 

 The nests are placed sometimes on bushes, some- 



