86 WOODLAND, MOOR, AND STREAM 



over the marsh from pool to pool, and from one dyke 

 to another through an atmosphere bathed in the soft, 

 hazy, golden light of sunset bird and sky, land and 

 water, alike glorified in its long slanting rays. How 

 often have I gazed on such a scene in my old marsh- 

 land home ! A few more years and it will be a rarer 

 sight ; for the marshes have been drained in many 

 counties, and where the heron had his home you will 

 soon see cornfields and fruit orchards. 



Winter has come, but no snow has fallen yet ; the 

 air is too cold for it to come down. Marsh and dykes 

 are frozen hard ; the keen winds from the sea cut 

 bitterly, making the reeds and flags, now dry and 

 withered, clash and rattle again as they rush over the 

 flats. In that clump of tangled reed, flag, rush, and 

 coarse bents is the heron, standing on one leg, warm 

 and snug, his head and neck drawn in to his shoulders. 

 The wind may blow its hardest, but it only knits the 

 tangle closer. It is no trouble for him to make a 

 way in and out as he requires it. The tide is just 

 near the ebb turn ; when it is fairly on the ebb he 

 will be moving. Although there is no town clock to 

 tell him the time, he knows, in some way or other, to 

 a minute when the tide has fairly turned. And now 

 he rises from his place of refuge, right in the middle 

 of the tangle in which he had been hiding. His long, 



