12 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs 



fancy to some particular breeding place, they will return year after year, if left 

 undisturbed. 



The species we are now describing arrives in Europe towards tbe end of 

 Marcb, and tbe various pairs begin to build shortly after, placing their nests 

 forty to fifty feet apart from each other. Their nests are large and flat, roughly 

 constructed of sticks and reeds, placed atop of growing reeds bent down all 

 round, and elevated a few feet above the level of the water, which is often over 

 six feet deep. Sometimes the nest is less substantial, consisting "merely of a 

 few dried rushes collected together to form a sort of platform just clear of the 

 water," as Colonel Irby has described. The eggs, three to four in number, and 

 of the same greenish-blue colour as, but of a slightly smaller size than, those of 

 the Common Heron, are laid between the middle of April and the end of the 

 first week in May. The nestlings, which make their appearance in July, have, 

 according to Mr. Howard Saunders, the skin and feet yellowish green and 

 the abdomen yellow; the crest hairy; the plumage reddish brown, the shafts 

 of the feathers lead-blue, all edged with white down, whitest on the abdomen ; the 

 upper half of the beak greenish horn colour, and the lower yellow. 



" In the young in the first plumage," we quote Seebohm, " the crest feathers 

 and the elongated feathers of the neck and back are absent. The black stripes 

 on the neck, breast, and belly are only represented by obscure dark centres to the 

 feathers, and all the small feathers of the upper parts have broad chestnut margins." 



The young begin to moult in the autumn of the year of their birth, and by 

 the following March have assumed an intermediate plumage, which is again 

 moulted in the next autumn, and when completed in the succeeding March, the 

 birds are arrayed in their adult feathering. In its general style of colouration 

 the adult Purple Heron resembles the previously described species ; but it differs 

 from it in having the forehead and crown black instead of white ; the dorsal 

 plumes, which are white in the Common Heron, are chestnut ; the sides of the 

 neck and the underparts below the throat are pale chestnut. Many of the under 

 wing-coverts are chestnut, the sides of the breast are reddish chestnut, and the 

 white of the belly and thighs is represented by chestnut, and that of the under 

 tail-coverts by black and white. 



The female is duller than the male, and its ornamental plumes are less con- 

 spicuous. Both birds are about thirty inches in total length. 



In winter the black plumes which adorn the back of the head are wanting, 

 and the elongated ashy feathers of the back as well as the long filamentous 

 scapulars are much less developed. These ornaments are only fully displayed 

 during the pairing season. 



