360 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



banks, then you have him easily, a very small knock 

 in the head being sufficient to stop him. 



The tenacity of life exhibited by the heron is some- 

 thing wonderful : though shot in the head, and hung 

 up as dead, a heron will sometimes raise his neck 

 several hours afterwards. To wring the neck is im- 

 possible it is like leather or a strong spiral spring : 

 you cannot break it, so that the only way to put the 

 creature out of pain is to cut the artery ; and even 

 then there are signs of muscular contraction for some 

 time. A labourer once asked me for a heron that I 

 had shot ; I gave it to him, and he cooked it. He 

 said he boiled it eight hours, and that it was not so 

 very fishy ! But even he could not manage the neck 

 part. 



This bird must have a wonderful power of sight to 

 catch its prey at night and out of some depth of 

 water. In severe winter weather, when the lake is 

 frozen, herons evidently suffer much. Most of them 

 leave, probably for the rivers, which do not freeze till 

 the last ; but one or two linger about the water- 

 meadows till they seem to despair of catching any- 

 thing, and will alight in the centre of a large pasture 

 field where there is no water, and stand there for hours 

 disconsolate. I suspect that the herons in winter-time 

 that come to the ponds do so for the fish which lie 

 at the bottom on the mud packed close together that 

 is, when the water is not deep. It is said that when 

 ice protects the fish herons eat the frogs in the water- 

 meadows ; but they can scarcely find many, for though 



