176 



against which they are silhouetted so 

 oddly. One's eyes open with astonish 

 ment when these sticks or excrescen 

 ces of the tree-tops slowly unfold an 

 enormous sweep of sail and, extending 

 their long stilts behind them, flap off 

 across the stream with a creaking 

 sound like the pulleys of a vessel when 

 the halliards are running through them. 

 Standing or flapping they are not 

 handsome birds and one who comes 

 suddenly upon a large heron for the 

 first time as he stands in the shallow 

 water of the brookside, will be con 

 vulsed with laughter, for if there is an 

 utterly clumsy and awkward form or 

 motion in bird-life it belongs to this 

 heron. 



Their homes are big baskets of nests 

 made of twigs as large as a man's 

 finger, closely intermeshed. From year 

 to year they use the same nest or build 

 over it until it has two or three stories 

 or more and is bigger than a bushel 

 basket. There are probably two dozen 

 nests in the dozen cottonwood trees, 

 some of the larger trees having three 

 or four or even six away up in their 

 tops where the branches seem scarcely 

 strong enough to bear such heavy bur 

 dens. From the top of the bluff one 

 can look down into the nests and in 

 early March see the big blue e^gs, al 

 most as large as hens' eggs, reposing 

 like amethysts in their rough brown 

 setting. Some authors state that not 

 over three eggs are laid, but I have 



seen four about as often as three and, 

 on one occasion, five in a nest. 



From their high-placed towers the 

 herons watch the small fry in the river 

 below and make forays among the 

 young trout, pike and catfish and the 

 frogs. They listen to the complaining 

 voices in the twilight and in the morn 

 ing give them cause for still further 

 complainings. They keep in terror the 

 big wood rats whose homes in the 

 clumps of elder berries below surpass 

 in size those of the herons. And the 

 gophers and field mice of the grain 

 fields never know at what moment an 

 ungainly shadow shall fall upon them 

 and end their harvestings. There was 

 a conceited young frog who sang loud 

 and shrill at sunset on the edge of the 

 river and who had an ambition to be, 

 not an ox like the one in the fable, but 

 a Patti. And she had her wish after a 

 fashion, for that connoisseur, the heron 

 who dwelt on the farthest branch over 

 the water, attracted by her vocal abili 

 ties, sought her out, and the little her 

 ons thought her the nicest pate de fois 

 gras they had ever eaten. 



There they dwell, this ancient race 

 of high-born philosophers, stalking the 

 shallows of sunny baylets, or dreaming 

 in the breeze of the tree-tops of tradi 

 tions old as the sequoias. What an 

 authority would you and I be if we 

 could read the unwritten history of 

 their race! 



Charles Elmer Jenny. 



Boughs are daily rifled 

 By the gusty thieves, 



And the Book of Nature 

 Getteth short of leaves. 

 -Hood, 



The Seasons. 



