BROOK TROUT 



mortally wounded. I have seen as many as a dozen 

 six-inch trout in the throat and stomach of a heron 

 killed in the early morning hours. 



In Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, herons work 

 great injury to the fish-culturists. In the government 

 fisheries the regulations prescribe that they must be 

 killed and their roosts destroyed, but in spite of these 

 measures their numbers are seriously large in many 

 places, and owners ot ponds trap them with steel traps 

 baited with fish. 



The small green heron and the bittern are also in the 

 list of fish-destroyers, but they are less destructive than 

 the night-heron on account of their smaller size, but 

 their presence about fish preserves is not at all bene- 

 ficial and they should be killed. 



Kingfisher. 



The kingfisher is one of the most active, impudent, 

 and persistent of the enemies of fish wherever found, 

 and it is only too abundant for the good of angling. 

 According to Dr. Brehm, the common European king- 

 fisher on the average destroys daily ten or twelve fish, 

 each about as long as a man's finger. In fourteen 

 years a German fish-culturist caught upwards of 700 

 kingfishers near his trout-ponds. The bird is equally 

 abundant and quite as destructive in New York, and 

 may be regarded as one of the pests afflicting the fish- 

 culturists. 



I have known of upward of 180 kingfishers being 

 132 



