COMMON HEEON. 143 



by stalking amongst them when asleep on the "banks" 

 during the day, and from its acute sense of hearing, 

 giving the alarm long before the fowl near the " pipes" 

 are conscious of any danger. To the punt and marsh 

 gunner, also, it is equally obnoxious from the same 

 cause, its loud " frank/' " frank," as it slowly flaps over 

 the ooze, being evidently received as a " caution " by 

 all other wild fowl. Of fresh water fish the heron is 

 particularly partial to pike, and in Norfolk, says Mr. 

 Lubbock, " gets half its subsistence from the fry of this 

 fish ; those which were taken by the falcons at Did- 

 lington had always small pike in their maws." On 

 one occasion Mr. Newcome saw a heron plunge head 

 first* into a marsh " dyke," some five or six feet deep, 

 and emerge again with a pike in its beak, weighing 

 from a pound and a-half to two pounds, which he secured 

 directly after the bird had killed it. He has likewise 

 taken a pike of that size from the stomach of a heron, 

 which had been seized by his hawk as soon as it rose. 



Fish, however, compose a portion only of a heron's 

 food, as I have ascertained repeatedly by an examination 

 of the contents of the stomach. In some, balls of fur, 

 as much as two inches in diameter, have attested their 

 extreme partiality for water rats, these pellets being 

 thrown up after the manner of hawks and owls ; and 

 mingled with this mass have been also found the slimy 

 remains and small white bones of the frog, fish scales, 

 portions of eels, and fragments of water insects, such as 

 water-beetles and boat-flies. In confinement it is well 

 known to devour small birds, feathers and all, and on 

 the broads and rivers, the young coots and waterhens 



* This habit is also alluded to by Messrs. Sheppard and 

 Whitear, who state that a heron, observed by them standing on 

 the steep bank of a river " in darting at a fish, precipitated himself 

 into the water, but was out again in an instant with its prey." 



