VANISHING NIGHT HERONS 



day. The four that sailed down to the 

 pond yesterday in the full glare of the 

 afternoon sun had no hesitation about 

 their flight. They swung the corner of 

 the wood and lighted on limbs of the trees 

 with as much directness and certainty as 

 a hawk might. Indeed, when their vora- 

 cious young are growing up they have to 

 fish night and day. It seems to me that 

 fish must be becoming more plentiful now 

 that the black-crowned night herons are 

 few in number, for a single bird must con- 

 sume yearly an enormous quantity. 



I undertook the care and feeding of two 

 once that I had taken from one of those 

 impossible nests. They were the most sol- 

 emnly ridiculous young creatures that 

 were ever made. " Man," says Plato, " is 

 a featherless biped." So were these youth- 

 ful night herons. They were pretty nearly 



as naked as truth and might have passed 

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