234 GREAT FLOCK OF HERONS. [PART It. 
great numbers. I should perhaps except Curlews, 
of which one sees a good many occasionally ; and 
Herons, which are very abundant. On one occa- 
sion, near the mouth of Loch Duich, about the 
beginning of September, I saw a very unusual 
number of these birds on wing together. There 
must have been several hundred of them, flapping 
to and fro with a lazy desultory flight, and looking, 
at a distance, against the dark wooded bank of the 
loch, like so many great white moths. Ordinarily, 
a dozen would probably have been the maximum 
number one would have met with in passing from 
one extremity of the loch to the other. There 
appeared, so far as I could make out, to be no 
particular inducement which could tend to the 
gathering together of this extraordinary assem- 
blage. Migration naturally suggests itself as a 
possible cause, but I am not aware that Herons are 
in the habit of changing their quarters in such 
large bodies, nor is September the time of year 
when one would have expected such a movement 
to take place; unless, indeed, the old birds may 
have been leading their young ones away from 
their breeding-stations to their autumn feeding- 
grounds. They could certainly at that time 
scarcely elsewhere find a more ample supply of 
