GREEN HERON; GREEN BITTERN 79 



and think that we have seen and known it, when, at 

 length, some bird or quadruped comes and takes pos- 

 session of it before our eyes, and imparts to it a wholly 

 new character ! The heron uses these shallows as I can- 

 not. I give them up to him. 



Oct. 10, 1860. Horace Mann shows me the skeleton 

 of a blue heron. The neck is remarkably strong, and 

 the bill. The latter is 5 + inches long to the feathers 

 above and 6| to the gape. A stake-driver which he has, 

 freshly killed, has a bill 3 inches long above and 4|^ to 

 the gape and between | and | deep vertically at the 

 base. This bird weighs a little over two pounds, being 

 quite large and fat. Its nails are longer and less curved 

 than those of the heron. The sharp bill of the heron, 

 like a stout pick, wielded by that long and stout neck, 

 would be a very dangerous weapon to encounter. He 

 has made a skeleton of the fish hawk which was brought 

 to me within a month. I remark the great eye-sockets, 

 and the claws, and perhaps the deep, sharp breast- 

 bone. Including its strong hooked bill it is clawed at 

 both ends, harpy-like. 



\_See also under American Bittern, pp. 68, 69 ; Fish 

 Hawk, p. 159.] 



GREEN HERON ; GREEN BITTERN 



June 11, 1840.^ We stole noiselessly down the 

 stream, occasionally driving a pickerel from the cov- 

 ert of the pads, or a bream from her nest, and the 

 small green bittern would now and then sail away on 



^ [Under this date Thoreau enters in his Journal some notes of the 

 Concord and Merrimac excursion of August and September, 1839.] 



