BY INLAND WATERS in 



lies raised a racket which you could hear a consid- 

 erable way off, over the water. The pond was 

 shallow and full of aquatic life, so that the parents 

 never had to range far for food. I presume they 

 took a great quantity of small crabs, which other- 

 wise would have lived and grown to grace our own 

 tables, but it was a small price to pay for the sight 

 of the stately, Japanese-like birds settling into the 

 tortured, Japanese-like trees, or standing on one 

 foot in the shallows at twilight, waiting to spear a 

 fish or crab with that long, powerful bill. The site 

 of this little heronry is now occupied by a boat- 

 house, from which a path leads up to a summer cot- 

 tage on the bank. The herons are no more. The 

 sound of the gramaphone floats out over the water 

 now, instead of the squawking of the little herons, 

 impatient for their dinner. Somehow I preferred 

 the herons, even to a " record " by Caruso. 



But they have by no means all disappeared from 

 our inland waters, especially in the autumn migra- 

 tion season, and on my last trip to the White Moun- 

 tains I found them still breeding there, along the 

 little Ham Branch. I have seen one caught, too, 

 in midsummer, in the Berkshires, by a small boy. 

 The bird had an injured leg, so that it could not run 

 fast enough to take the air, or so it seemed, for its 

 frantic beating of wings and its lopsided, limping 

 run availed it nothing. The boy grabbed it in his 

 arms, and held the neck with difficulty, to prevent 

 being struck in the face by the angry bill, and after 

 a prolonged struggle got the heron home to the hen- 

 yard, where he placed it for the night, behind a 

 seven-foot wire. The heron, however, recovered 



