COMMON HERON. 275 



when with us, the herons roost on secluded rocky islets, on certain 

 of which, if visited at high water, and approached noiselessly, a 

 party of a dozen or so may sometimes be surprised dozing together 

 under the shelter of a high rock. Standing on one long rigid leg, 

 the other drawn up to the body and concealed among the feathers 

 all puffed up in a great ball, with only the tip of the bill protruding, 

 the party looks like a circle of great grey mops stuck in the ground. 

 When waking to the fact of an intruder, a man with a gun, being 

 in the midst of them, away they go flapping and floundering, with 

 every mark of extreme consternation, but in perfect silence, till, 

 having got some little distance, and fairly on the wing, they come 

 wheeling round to examine the cause of their terror, and then 

 scold him with braying screams for the shock their nerves had 

 sustained. When winged, a heron walks away, cowering down 

 among the inequalities of the rocks, her neck extended horizontally, 

 near to the ground, trying to conceal her tall form as much as 

 possible, her bright yellow eye fixed vigilantly and anxiously upon 

 her adversary. When brought to bay, she defends herself 

 valiantly, lunging out wickedly with her long rapier-like bill, 

 quickly recovering herself again, and putting herself in guard like 

 a master of fence, and uttering all the time such dreadfully 

 discordant outcries that, on one such occasion when picking up a 

 wounded heron near a little fishing village, I was afraid that the 

 women would come out, alarmed that a child was being killed." 



Regarding the absence of heronries on the Outer Hebrides, Mr 

 Elwes has sent me the following remarks : " This bird, though 

 common at all other times of the year, does not breed, so far as I 

 am aware, in the Long island. I am at a loss to find a reason for 

 this, as the country is in every way very suitable to its habits ; and, 

 though there are no trees on which to make its nest, there are 

 many small islets in excluded lochs which, in Ross and Sutherland, 

 are often used as breeding places. In Islay there is a ruined castle 

 on an islet in Loch-a-Gurim, the walls of which, though not more 

 than five or six feet high, have several Herons' nests on them every 

 year; and Thompson, in his Birds of Ireland, gives an account of 

 a heronry on a bare hill-side in the same island. In the 

 Highlands, the Heron is the earliest breeder we have, except the 

 raven and cross-bill, as I have found their young ones hatched 

 by the middle of April. In the south they are nearly a month 

 earlier." 



