224 BRITISH BIRDS 



well-placed and safeguarded the birds return to it year after year. 

 As a rule the nests are built on the tops of large trees in a sheltered 

 part of the wood. The nest is a bulky, rudely built platform struc- 

 ture of sticks and weeds, lined with rushes, wool, and other soft 

 materials. Three or four eggs are laid, very pale dull green in 

 colour. The young are fed in the nest five or six weeks before they 

 fly. Two broods are reared in the season. 



The heronry is a most interesting place to visit when the young 

 birds are nearly old enough to fly, and are most hungry and voci- 

 ferous, and stand erect on the nests or neighbouring branches, look- 

 ing very strange and tall and conspicuous on the tree-tops. The nests 

 are of various sizes, and have a very disordered appearance, some 

 of them looking like huge bundles of sticks and weed-stalks flung 

 anyhow into the trees. At this period the parent birds are extremely 

 active, and if the colony be a large one, they are seen arriving 

 singly, or in twos and threes, at intervals of a few minutes through- 

 out the day. Each time a great blue bird with well-filled gullet is 

 seen sweeping downwards the young birds in all the nests are 

 thrown into a great state of excitement, and greet the food- 

 bearer with a storm of extraordinary sounds. The cries are power, 

 ful and harsh, but vary greatly, and resemble grunts and squeals 

 and prolonged screams, mingled with chatterings and strange 

 quacking or barking notes. When the parent bird has settled on its 

 own nest, and fed its young, the sounds die away ; but when several 

 birds arrive in quick succession the vocal tempest rages continu- 

 ously among the trees, for every young bird appears to regard any 

 old bird on arrival as its own parent bringing food to satisfy its 

 raging hunger. 



The cry of the adult is powerful and harsh, and not unlike the 

 harsh alarm-cry of the peacock. 



Common Bittern. 



Botaurus stellaris. 



Crown and nape black ; general colour buff, irregularly barred 

 above and streaked below with black ; feathers of the neck long, 

 and forming a ruff; bill greenish yellow; legs and feet green. 

 Length, thirty inches. 



The bittern, formerly a common bird, is hardly entitled to a 

 place in this book, since it has long been extirpated as a breeding 



