THE HERON 



these, obviously evolved from the extreme respect with 

 which they looked upon its angling powers, was that, 

 if a fisherman carried in his pocket the foot of one of 

 these birds, he would enjoy constant success in his 

 craft, the theory being that fish were attracted by some 

 odour of the foot as the bird stood in the water. 



This bird is, as I have said, an omnivorous feeder, 

 and will devour water - voles and even moorhens. 

 Two or three years since a sportsman out with his 

 keeper surprised a heron in the very article of bolting 

 one of these waterfowl. A retriever was sent into the 

 water after them, and the heron flapped off, bearing 

 the moorhen in its bill. This it carried to a bare knoll 

 at a little distance, and there swallowed it. Herons are 

 good swimmers when they choose, and it is on record 

 that one of these birds has been known to swim out 

 to a moorhen's nest for the purpose of devouring the 

 young ones. 



There is a great deal of discrepancy about the nest- 

 ing habits of herons. These birds usually lay from 

 four to six eggs, but at times they seem to produce 

 them very intermittently. Three eggs have, for instance, 

 been taken from the same nest, one of which contained 

 a well-grown young bird, the next a smaller bird, while 

 the third was scarcely incubated. In the opinion of 

 some observers herons hatch out three broods of young 

 every season. That, however, I take it, is a scarcely 

 normal state of things. In some heronries rooks destroy 

 hundreds of eggs, and the herons there have been 

 observed to go on laying from the beginning of March 

 to the middle of May or later. I have seen a heronry 

 close alongside a large colony of rooks, and I have no 

 doubt that the herons suffered from the proximity of 

 such thieving and marauding neighbours. Yet I could 

 not discover that the herons, which are bold birds 



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