80 WADING BIRDS. 



Grasshoppers, other large insects, and particularly dragon- flies 

 they are very expert at striking, and occasionally feed upon 

 the seeds of the pond-lilies contiguous to their usual haunts. 

 Our species, in all probability, as well as the European Heron, 

 at times also preys upon young birds which may be acciden- 

 tally straggling near their solitary retreats. The foreign kind 

 has been known to swallow young snipes and other birds 

 when they happen to come conveniently within reach. 



The Heron, though sedate in its movements, flies out with 

 peculiar ease, often ascending high and proceeding far in its 

 annual migrations. When it leaves the coast and traces on 

 wing the meanders of the creek or river, it is believed to 

 prognosticate rain; and when it proceeds downwards, dry 

 weather. From its timorous vigilance and wildness it is very 

 difficult to approach it with a gun ; and unheeded as a depre- 

 dator on the scaly fry, it is never sought but .as an object of 

 food, and for this purpose the young are generally preferred. 



The present is very nearly related to the Common Heron 

 of Europe, which appears to be much more gregarious at its 

 breeding-places than ours ; for Pennant mentions having seen 

 as many as eighty nests on one tree, and Montague saw a 

 heronry on a small island in a lake in the north of Scotland 

 whereon there was only one scrubby oak-tree, which being 

 insufiicient to contain all the nests, many were placed on the 

 ground sooner than the favorite situation should be abandoned. 

 The decline in the amusement of hawking has now occasioned 

 but little attention to the preservation of heronries, so that 

 nine or ten of these nurseries are nearly all that are known to 

 exist at present in Great Britain. " Not to know a Hawk from 

 a Heronshaw " (the former name for a Heron) was an old 

 adage which arose when the diversion of Heron-hawking was 

 in high fashion ; and it has since been corrupted into the ab- 

 surd vulgar proverb, " not to know a hawk from a handsaw " ! 

 As the Rooks are very tenacious of their eyries, and piratical to 

 all their feathered neighbors, it might be expected that they 

 would at times prove bad and encroaching neighbors to the 

 quiet Herons ; and I have been credibly informed by a friend 



