ARDEA COCOT. 95 



Herons fish by night and by day. If the eye is adapted to see well with 

 the bright sun shining, how can it see at night and in such unfavour- 

 able circumstances without some such extraneous aid to vision as the 

 attributed luminosity ? 



Herons, of all birds, have the slowest flight ; but though incapable 

 of progressing rapidly when flying horizontally, when pursued by a 

 Hawk the Heron performs with marvellous ease and grace an aerial 

 feat unequalled by any other bird, namely, that of rising vertically to an 

 amazing height in the air. The swift vertical flight with which the 

 pursued ascends until it becomes a mere speck in the blue zenith, the 

 hurried zigzag flight of the pursuer, rising every minute above its prey, 

 only to be left below again by a single flap of the Heron's wings, forms 

 a sight of such grace, beauty, and power, as to fill the mind of the 

 spectator with delight and astonishment. 



When the enemy comes to close quarters, the Heron instinctively 

 throws itself belly up to repel the assault with its long, crooked, cutting 

 claws. Raptorial species possess a similar habit ; and the analogous 

 correlation of habit and structure in genera so widely separated is very 

 curious. The Falcon uses its feet to strike, lacerate, and grasp its prey ; 

 the Heron to anchor itself firmly to its perch ; but for weapons of 

 defence they are equally well adapted, and are employed in precisely the 

 same manner. The Heron, with its great length of neck and legs, its 

 lean unballasted body, large wings, and superabundance of plumage, is 

 the least suited of birds to perch high ; yet the structure of the feet 

 renders it perfectly safe for the bird to do so. Thus the Heron is 

 enabled to sit on a smooth enamelled rush or on the summit of a tree, 

 and doze securely in a wind that, were its feet formed like those of 

 other Waders, would blow it away like a bundle of dead feathers. 



Another characteristic of Herons is that they carry the neck, when 

 flying, folded in the form of the letter S. At other times the bird also 

 carries the neck this way ; and it is, indeed, in all long-necked species 

 the figure the neck assumes when the bird reposes or is in the act of 

 watching something below it ; and the Heron's life is almost a per- 

 petual watch. Apropos of this manner of carrying the neck, so natural 

 to the bird, is it not the cause of the extreme wariness observable in 

 Herons ? Herons are, I think, everywhere of a shy disposition ; with us 

 they are the wildest of water-fowl, yet there is no reason for their 

 being so, since they are never persecuted. 



Birds ever fly reluctantly from danger ; and all species possessing the 

 advantage of a long neck, such as the Swan, Flamingo, Stork, Spoon- 

 bill, &c., will continue with their necks stretched to their utmost 

 capacity watching an intruder for an hour at a time rather than fly 



