THE NIGHT HERON 
Nycticorax griseus 
Upper plumage dark to black, with blue-green reflections ; 
two long plumes from head; white wings and tail grey; 
under-parts a grey buff-white; eyes crimson ; young are dull 
grey and brown, mottled and spotted. Total length, 21 
inches. 
Tuis is a really common bird, but being nocturnal 
it is not very often noticed. Many a sont or palm 
tree that people walk under may have four or five 
sitting so quietly among the branches that they are 
not observed; but towards evening—before the 
sun has actually dropped behind the horizon—they 
begin to waken up ; and curious “ squawk, squawk ” 
calls, then flappings about as they move from branch 
to branch, will be heard, till, as the afterglow begins, 
they all start mounting into the air and taking great 
circles round and round, or away in a bee-line to 
some favourite feeding-ground, where they remain 
all night, and return at dawn to their roosting- 
places. In some trees in the garden of the old 
Luxor Hotel, there is, as I write in 1909, a colony 
—two of the trees they roost in hang over the 
very carriage roadway up to the station,—noisy and 
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