150 ardeid^e. 



Herons are not to be trusted where young fowl of any kind are 

 accessible to them. One correspondent reports several young wild- 

 ducks to have been killed and eaten ; — another mentions a young 

 heron which, though regularly well fed, killed and ate at different 

 times some chickens three weeks old. This bird, about two hours 

 after having fed on the entrails of a couple of fowls, attacked a 

 young turkey a month old, which it endeavoured to swallow whole, but 

 in vain. A servant having witnessed the assault hastened to the tur- 

 key's rescue ; in endeavouring to save which, he dislocated the neck 

 of its assailant, thereby causing the heron's death. Its intended prey, 

 owing to the injury received, lived only two weeks after the attack. 

 This heron struck viciously with its bill at dogs, hens, or any living ob- 

 jects, except man himself, that came within its reach. It one day con- 

 sumed, though not at a single meal, a haddock of 4 lbs. weight. 

 Another bird has eaten three or four full grown rats successively 

 Indeed the heron proves sometimes useful in captivity by killing these 

 animals, and is often serviceable as a mouser, watching, more patiently 

 than a cat, at a mouse-hole until the animal appears, when it is seized 

 and swallowed on the instant. 



Three young herons, taken from a nest in Hillsborough park in 1848, 

 came under my notice.* The nest contained a few young perch about 

 four inches in length ; eels much larger were in another nest, doubtless 

 in both instances as food for the young, though these were but a few 

 days out of the shell. The nestlings had the irides of a yellow colour, 

 though not just so bright as those of the adult bird. In . this respect 

 they differ from such native gulls as have yellow irides, these birds 

 having them dark in youth ; towards maturity they become gradually 

 lighter. When any person disturbed the large basket in which these 

 herons were kept, they pecked fiercely at him, uttering at the same 

 time a loud and angry cry, which instantly, on any food being offered 

 was changed to a kind of soft clicking note.f Eish and flesh-meat 

 were given to them ; and when three weeks old they would swallow, at 

 one gulp, a full-sized pollan — a fish as large as a herring — which was 



* Four eggs arc generally laid. The young of the first brood here were out on 

 the branches, and nearly as large as their parents at the end of May. 



f A friend describes the cry of the heron in its breeding haunts to resemble in 

 part the word clatter gutturally uttered. 



