Squacco Heron. 403 



144. SQUACCO HERON (Ardea comata). 



I have the unexceptionable authority of Yarrell for the fact 

 that this beautiful species has been taken in Wiltshire, but no 

 particulars of the capture, the locality, or the date are recorded 

 by him : I presume, however, that he derived his information 

 from Colonel Montagu, who relates that a bird of this species 

 was shot at Boyton, in Wiltshire, by Mr. Lambert, in 1775, and 

 that mention is made in the Minutes of the Linnsean Transac- 

 tions, vol. iii., that Mr. Lambert presented a drawing of the bird, 

 April 4th, 1797.* It is an Asiatic and African bird : the delicate 

 buff-colour streaked with dark lines of the upper plumage ; the 

 pure white of the under parts ; the hair-like feathers of the back, 

 whence the specific name comata ; and the general shape and 

 bearing of the bird, combine to give it an elegance unrivalled 

 even in this graceful family : but it is a very rare bird in the 

 British isles, and its appearance is annually becoming more and 

 more infrequent. 



The only locality in which I have met with it in its own 

 haunts was on the causeway which crosses the upper end of the 

 Lake Bourget, at Aix-les-Bains, in the South of France, when 

 driving in company with Mr. H. M. Upcher, a brother member of 

 the ELO.U., an able ornithologist, and notorious for the laudable 

 efforts he made to retain the Great Bustard which visited his 

 estate at Feltwell, in Norfolk, in 1876. We were both equally 

 delighted to watch this rare species, as it sat unconcernedly 

 perched on a pole in the lake, within a short distance of the 

 carriage as we drove by ; and when it did take wing it flapped 

 gracefully away with slow easy movements, a true Heron in all 

 its ways and appearance. Canon Tristram found it breeding in 

 large colonies in a dense bed of reeds at Lake Halloula, in North 

 Africa, each nest piled up to a height of three or four feet above 

 the mud, supported on tufts of reeds, and composed of great 

 heaps of weeds and rushes. -f- Mr. Seebohm, too, fell in with a 



Montagu's Supplement to ' Ornith Diet.' in loco. 

 t Ibis for I860, p. 163. 



262 



