I 82 IN BIRD LAND. 



cast — not jewels by any means — in the nest. On 

 my second visit four of the oddest birdUngs I ever 

 looked upon greeted me with wide-open eyes and 

 mouths. They were covered with light yellowish 

 down, and the space about the eyes was of a 

 greenish hue, — one of the characteristic markings 

 of the adult birds. When they opened their mouths, 

 expecting to be fed, their throats puffed out some- 

 what hke the throats of croaking frogs, making a 

 good-sized pocket inside to receive chunks of food. 

 The thought struck me that perhaps the pocket was 

 designed as a sort of temporary storage place for 

 victuals until the nestling was ready to swallow them. 

 The birds made a low, quaint noise that cannot be 

 represented phonetically. Indeed, the picture they 

 made was slightly uncanny, so I did not linger about 

 it overlong. 



A week later my third and last call on the heron 

 household was made. What an odd spectacle it 

 presented ! The young birds had grown wonder- 

 fully, though still covered with down, with very little 

 sign of feathers. As my head appeared above the 

 rim of the nest, they slowly craned up their India- 

 rubber necks, then rose on their stilt-Hke legs, and 

 looked at me with wondering, wide-open eyes that 

 gleamed almost like gold. The spectacle made me 

 think of ghouls, incongruous as the simile may seem. 

 When I touched one of the birds, it huddled, 

 half-alarmed, down to the bottom of the nest. An- 

 other slyly stalked off to the edge of the platform, 

 upon a thick clump of twigs and leaves, eying me 



