94. THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
above the surface, a third had only head and neck 
out, the whole body being submerged; and it 
puzzled me to think how he could keep himself 
down unless it was by grasping the roots of the 
grass with his claws. Occasionally one of the 
bathers would shift his position, coming partly 
up or going lower down, or turning over on the 
other side; but there was no flutter or bird-like 
excitement. They rested long in one position, 
and moved in a leisurely, deliberate manner, 
lying and luxuriating in the tepid water like pigs, 
buffaloes, hippopotamuses, and other water-loving 
mammalians. I watched them for an hour or so, 
and when I left, two were still lying down in the 
water. The other three had finished their bath, 
and were standing drying their plumage in the 
hot sun. 
This was not the first surprise the heron had 
given me, but the first was received far from this 
land in my early shooting and collecting days, and 
the species was not our well-known historical bird, 
the Ardea cinerea of Britain and Europe generally, 
and Asia and Africa, but the larger Ardea cocoi of 
South America, a bird with a bigger wing-spread, 
but so like it in colour and action that any person 
from England on first seeing it would take it for 
a very large specimen of his familiar home bird. 
It happened that I was making a collection of 
the birds of my part of the country and was in 
want of a specimen of our common heron. A few 
of these birds haunted the river near my home, and 
