76 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIKDS 



scape, complete from bill to toe, while, perhaps, I have 

 idled ! I see two herons. A small bird is pursuing the 

 heron as it does a hawk. Perhaps it is a blackbird and 

 the herons gobble up their young ! 



Sept. 18, 1858. Near the pond 1 we scare up twenty 

 or thirty ducks, and at the pond three blue herons. 

 They are of a hoary blue. One flies afar and alights on 

 a limb of a large white pine near Well Meadow Head, 

 bending it down. I see him standing there with out- 

 stretched neck. 



Aug. 14, 1859. When I reached the upper end of 

 this weedy bar, at about 3 p. M., this warm day, I 

 noticed some light-colored object in mid-river, near the 

 other end of the bar. At first I thought of some large 

 stake or board standing amid the weeds there, then of 

 a fisherman in a brown holland sack, referring him to 

 the shore beyond. Supposing it the last, I floated nearer 

 and nearer till I saw plainly enough the motions of the 

 person, whoever it was, and that it was no stake. Look- 

 ing through my glass thirty or forty rods off, I thought 

 certainly that I saw C., 2 who had just bathed, making 

 signals to me with his towel, for I referred the object to 

 the shore twenty rods further. I saw his motions as he 

 wiped himself, — the movements of his elbows and his 

 towel. Then I saw that the person was nearer and there- 

 fore smaller, that it stood on the sand-bar in mid-stream 

 in shallow water and must be some maiden in a bath- 

 ing-dress, — for it was the color of brown holland web, 

 — and a very peculiar kind of dress it seemed. But 

 about this time I discovered with my naked eye that it 



1 [Fairhaven Pond.] 2 [W. E. Channing.] 



