VANISHING NIGHT HERONS 



sailing in companies over the marshes and 

 ponds used to sound like echoes of a con- 

 vocation of witches, falling through damp 

 gloom as broomstick flights went over. 

 Shakespeare named a witch Sycorax. He 

 may have been making game of herons. 



To-day, having seen these four, I went 

 down to the places which used to be the 

 old-time haunts of night herons, and 

 looked carefully but in vain for traces of 

 their presence. It is their nesting time. 

 There should be eggs about to hatch, or 

 young about to make prodigious and un- 

 gainly growth in singularly flimsy nests 

 that let you see the blue of the eggs faintly 

 visible through the loosely crossed twigs 

 against the blue of the sky. These I did 

 not find, and the big cedars which used to 

 be so populous were lonely enough. 



Once there would be a nest in every 

 tree, two-thirds of the way up, and a big 

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