234 GREAT FLOCK OF HERONS. [PART II. 



great numbers. I should perhaps except Curlews, 

 of which one sees a good many occasionally ; and 

 Herons, which are very abundant. On one occa- 

 sion, near the mouth of Loch Duich, about the 

 beginning of September, I saw a very [unusual 

 number of these birds on wing together. There 

 must have been several hundred of them, flapping 

 to and fro with a lazy desultory flight, and looking, 

 at a distance, against the dark wooded bank of the 

 loch, like so many great white moths. Ordinarily, 

 a dozen would probably have been the maximum 

 number one would have met with in passing from 

 one extremity of the loch to the other. There 

 appeared, so far as I could make out, to be no 

 particular inducement which could tend to the 

 gathering together of this extraordinary assem- 

 blage. Migration naturally suggests itself as a 

 possible cause, but I am not aware that Herons are 

 in the habit of changing their quarters in such 

 large bodies, nor is September the time of year 

 when one would have expected such a movement 

 to take place ; unless, indeed, the old birds may 

 have been leading their young ones away from 

 their breeding-stations to their autumn feeding- 

 grounds. They could certainly at that time 

 scarcely elsewhere find a more ample supply of 



