246 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
both the baby herons and I were looking, and for 
them realization came quickly. The sun had 
sunk still lower, and great clouds had begun to 
spread their robes and choose their tints for the 
coming pageant. 
And now the vanguard of the homing host ap- 
peared,—black dots against blue and white and 
salmon,—thin, gaunt forms with slow-moving 
wings which cut the air through half the sky. 
The little herons and I watched them come—first 
a single white egret, which spiralled down, just 
as I had many times seen the first returning Spad 
eddy downward to a cluster of great hump- 
backed hangars; then a trio of tricolored herons, 
and six little blues, and after that I lost count. 
It seemed as if these tiny islands were magnets 
drawing all the herons in the world. 
Parrakeets whirl roostwards with machine-like 
synchronism of flight; geese wheel down in more 
or less regular formation; but these herons con- | 
centrated along straight lines, each describing 
its individual radius from the spot where it 
caught its last fish or shrimp to its nest or the 
particular branch on which it will spend the 
night. With a hemicircle of sufficient size, one 
might plot all of the hundreds upon hundreds of 
