498 BRITISH BIRDS. 



Away from its nest the Night-Heron is a very silent bird ; but if the 

 colony in which it breeds be invaded, its cries are louder than those of any 

 of its coiflpanions. As you approach the nests a lazy quale is heard, when 

 you are in sight of the bird you hear a more anxious ca-wak, and when 

 really alarmed the notes that rapidly follow each other might be compared 

 to the sound that a giant would make if he gargled. 



The Night-Heron is almost exclusively a swamp-feeding bird, and the 

 stomachs of those I have examined contained freshwater Crustacea and the 

 tender shoots of water-plants. It also feeds on small fish, small frogs and 

 tadpoles, water -beetles, the larvae of dragonflies and other insects, worms 

 and snails. 



In the valley of the Danube this species is the earhest Heron to breed. 

 Both the colonies which I visited were in flooded forests of pollard willows. 

 On the 12th of June some of the eggs of the Night- Heron were hatched, 

 whilst many of those of the Little Egret and Squacco Heron were highly 

 incubated ; but nearly all the eggs of the Common Heron were fresh. In 

 Ceylon Capt. Legge found eggs of the Night-Heron in March ; in Cash- 

 mere Brooks found it breeding in April and May ; but in the plains of 

 North-west India Hume obtained eggs as late as the 31st of August. In 

 India and Ceylon, us well as in China, it breeds in trees ; but it is said 

 sometimes to make its nest on the bent-down reeds in treeless marshes, 

 though the evidence of this is not very reliable*. A visit to one of the 

 great breeding-places of the Herons is an event in the life of an ornitho- 

 logist. I have already described the colonies on the Danube, where I 

 found the Night-Heron breeding in company with the Little Egret and 

 Squacco Heron, and extract the following narrative of a visit to a similar 

 colony, somewhat later in the year, from Barkley's ' Bulgaria before the 

 War':— 



" For a long time it had been a puzzle to me where the various waders 

 &c. built their nests ; for though the "birds were to be seen at every few 

 yards along the muddy banks of the river, or slowly flying over the 

 marshy islands, I had as yet never discovered their nesting-ground. At 

 last, one fine afternoon in the early summer, I accompanied a friend in a 

 small boat on an excursion a few miles down the river below Rustchuk. 

 On approaching a small island which was covered with water about a foot 

 deep, we heard, amidst the dense willow-thicket which overspread it, a 

 noise as if the inhabitants of Purgatory had made their home there, and 

 were having an unusually bad time of it. Pushing our small boat into a 



* My friend Mr. Sennett informs me that he found the Night-Heron breeding on 

 broken-down rushes in a great heronry in the salt-marshes in Texas. The American 

 bird is, however, on an average larger than ours, and is regarded by American ornitho- 

 logists as subspeoifically distinct, under the name of Nycticorax grisea var. noma. It 

 generally breeds in trees. 



