HERON ALIGHTING ON ITS NEST. 27 



tributed to render their appearance irresistibly 

 ludicrous: but their excitement seemed to have 

 reached its utmost when one of the old birds, 

 which had flapped round the nest for some time, 

 at last prepared to alight, gradually allowing his 

 outstretched legs to fall from the horizontal to the 

 perpendicular, and working his wings with in- 

 creased violence and rapidity until he found a 

 firm footing on the margin of the nest, when, open- 

 ing his beak, he immediately disgorged several 

 small eels, which were greedily devoured by the 

 three young birds. The eels appeared to be 

 very small; but I had ere long an opportunity of 

 observing that even when a fish is of a tolerable 

 size, the heron contrives to conceal it within the 

 elastic pouch to which, in so many birds, the di- 

 latable skin of the throat can be readily convert- 

 ed ; for many minutes had not elapsed before I 

 saw an old heron alight on a more distant tree, 

 and opening his mouth, drop a fish, which ap- 

 peared to be above half a pound weight, into the 

 bottom of his nest. I had, it is true, only a pass- 

 ing glimpse of it as it fell, and therefore at the mo- 

 ment could make only a rough guess at its weight 

 and species, but it appeared to be a bream, or large 

 roach, and of such a shape and size as I should 

 scarcely have supposed to have been stowed away 

 within that graceful neck, if I had not been aware, 



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