THE COMMON HERON 9 



lessly reaching the edge of a bank beneath which a Heron was standing, and 

 " flapping my cloak and shouting," he says, " to my surprise, it sat down and 

 waited till I rushed down the bank. Shielding my face from its dangerous beak, 

 I took it up and carried it to the field above. When put down it remained 

 crouching in a sitting attitude on the ground watching me, and uttering occasion- 

 ally a low croaking sound. When I went about ten yards off, it rose to its legs 

 and walked deliberately to a furze bush and sat down under it. I then took it 

 into the open field and threw it into the air as high as I could ; it merely 

 expanded its wings and pitched again and sat down. Taking it to the shore I 

 retired, and then it waded out till the waves lifted it off its feet, when to my 

 surprise it paddled manfully against them for awhile, but the wind drove it back. 

 After some fifteen or twenty minutes of my rather cruel experiments, I left it 

 where I found it, apparently paralysed with terror, but unhurt. It could spread 

 its wings and the wing-bones were sound, and it was apparently uninjured in any 

 way. Judging from the top-knot it was a young bird, but not of that year." 



" The flight of the Heron," as pictured by Seebohm, " is slow and steady, 

 with deliberate and regular beats of the long wings, and in the evening several 

 birds may sometimes be seen flying home to roost, steadily and at a considerable 

 height, like Rooks. Although the flight appears to be laboured, it is really very 

 rapid, and the bird frequently wanders great distances to feed. When flying its 

 long legs are carried straight out behind, and serve to balance and guide it in its 

 course, whilst the head is drawn up almost to the shoulders." 



Except at the breeding season, when as many as eighty pairs have been 

 known to nest in one great oak tree, Herons are not truly gregarious, but they 

 occur usually in small companies of four or six birds, and in severe winters the 

 writers have seen in Rubislaw Den, in the outskirts of the city of Aberdeen, a 

 solitary Heron sure sign of a hard winter watching, for a week at a time, for 

 fish by the trout burn that flows through the Den, close to the house. 



Towards the end of the year trout make their way, as is well known, from the 

 larger streams into even the smallest upland burns. " Of this fact," as Mr. Abel 

 Chapman remarks, " the solitary Heron is well aware, and his great grey form is 

 a characteristic feature at this season, solemnly flapping across the moors to some 

 little burn that he wots of as a favourite resort of the trout ; or perhaps he 

 startles a nervous shooter by suddenly flapping out, under his very feet, from some 

 deep-sided hidden little burnlet, where the sportsman would as soon expect to find 

 a Dodo, as either Heron or trout." 



VOL IV. 



