GREAT BLUE HERON 71 



parently a perch (?), some seven inches long originally, 

 with three or four pebble-shaped, compact masses of the 

 fur of some very small quadruped, as a meadow mouse, 

 some one fourth inch thick by three fourths in diameter, 

 also several wing-cases of black beetles such as I see on 

 the meadow flood. 



[See also under Great Blue Heron, p. 79; Kingbird, 

 p. 218.] 



GREAT BLUE HERON 



1850. John Garfield brought me this morning (Sep- 

 tember 6th) a young great heron (^Ardea Herodias)^ 

 which he shot this morning on a pine tree on the North 

 Branch.^ It measured four feet, nine inches, from bill 

 to toe and six feet in alar extent, and belongs to a dif- 

 ferent race from myself and Mr. Frost. ^ I am glad to 

 recognize him for a native of America, — why not an 

 American citizen ? 



• April 19, 1852. Scared up three blue herons in the 

 little pond close by, quite near us. It was a grand sight 

 to see them rise, so slow and stately, so long and lim- 

 ber, with an undulating motion from head to foot, 

 undulating also their large wings, undulating in two 

 directions, and looking warily about them. With this 

 graceful, limber, undulating motion they arose, as if so 

 they got under way, their two legs trailing parallel far 

 behind like an earthy residuum to be left behind. They 

 are large, like birds of Syrian lands, and seemed to op- 

 press the earth, and hush the hillside to silence, as they 



1 [The Assabet River.] 



2 [Rev. Barzillai Frost, the Concord minister.] 



