330 STRANGE DWELLINGS. 



of rats in the brook ; but soon after the Herons had settled here 

 to breed, the rats became exceedingly scarce, and now I rarely 

 see one in the place where formerly I could observe numbers 

 sitting on the stones at the mouth of their holes, as soon as 

 the sun had gone below the horizon.' 



When tne Heron flies to its nest from any great distance, it 

 generally ascends to a considerable height, and is in the habit of 

 uttering a curious and very harsh cry, which at once tells the 

 naturalist that a Heron is on the wing. When a Heron passes 

 immediately over the observer, the effect is very remarkable, 

 the long, stretched-out legs and neck and slender body looking 

 like a large knitting-needle supported on enormous wings. 



To see the Heron alight on its nest or on a branch is rather 

 a curious sight. The bird descends, drops its long legs, places 

 its feet on the branch, and then flaps its huge wings as if to get 

 its balance before it settles down. The rustics have an idea that 

 a Heron is obliged to allow its legs to dangle on either side of 

 the nest while it sits on its eggs, and some will aver that a hole 

 is made in the nest through which the legs can be thrust. It is 

 scarcely necessary to say that the construction of a bird's legs 

 prevents it from assuming such an attitude, and that the long 

 Heron can sit as easily upon its pale green eggs as the sliort- 

 limbed domestic fowl on her white eggs. 



Some of our common British birds build nests that can vie, 

 in point of beauty and delicacy, with any nest made by birds 

 of other lands. It is scarcely possible to conceive a nest which 

 is more worthy of admiration than that of the Long-tailed Tit- 

 mouse, which has already been described ; and in their own 

 way, the houses erected by the Chaffinch and Goldfinch are 

 quite as beautiful. As there are some points of similarity in 

 the two nests, they will be mentioned in connection with each 

 other. 



First, we will take the nest of the Chaffinch {Fringilla conkbs). 



Although the beautifully-spotted eggs are plentiful in the 

 collection of every nest-hunting schoolboy, they do not come 

 into his little museum for some time. The eggs of the black- 



