WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 359 



But although the night seems the heron's principal 

 feeding-time, he frequently fishes in the day. Gener- 

 ally, his long neck enables him to see danger, but not 

 always. Several times I have come right on a heron, 

 when the banks of the brook were high and the bushes 

 thick, before he has seen me, so as to be for the 

 moment within five yards. His clumsy terror is quite 

 ludicrous : try how he will he cannot fly fast at 

 starting ; he requires fifty yards to get properly 

 under way. 



What a contrast with the swift snipe, that darts 

 off at thirty miles an hour from under your feet ! 

 The long, hanging legs, the stretched-out neck, the wide 

 wings and body seem to offer a mark which no one 

 could possibly miss : yet with an ordinary gun and 

 snipe-shot I have had a heron get away safely like 

 this more than once. You can hear the shot rattle 

 up against him, and he utters a strange, harsh, screech- 

 ing " quaack," and works his wings in mortal fright, 

 but presently gets half-way up to the clouds and sails 

 away in calm security. His neck then seems to drop 

 down in a bend, the head being brought back as he 

 settles to his flight, so that the country people say the 

 heron often carries a snake. 



The mark he offers to shot is much less than would 

 be supposed ; he is all length and no breadth ; the 

 body is very much smaller than it looks. But if you 

 can stalk him in the brook till within thirty or forty 

 yards, and can draw " a bead " on his head as he 

 lifts it up every now and then to glance over the 



