200 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



generally called a crane, but this is erroneous. It is found in large numbers, and in 

 the breeding season forms rookeries which are a serious menace to the fishing waters 

 of the neighborhood. It is extremely shy and cautious, fishing chiefly at night or 

 early in the morning. It stands perfectly motionless in the water until a fish comes 

 within reach when it strikes with its long, sharp, heavy bill, which deals death to any 

 of the fish kind. 



They have been caught in steel traps set in ponds within twenty feet of a hatchery 

 building. The traps are set in shallow water, taking precaution to secure them so as 

 to prevent the bird flying away with them. When a heron is captured in a trap he 

 should be killed at once with a long club or a load of shot. Great care should be 

 taken to keep out of the reach of his murderous bill. Once I had the misfortune to be 

 struck by a wounded heron, and I am sure that if his bill had struck me squarely on 

 the hand it would have gone entirely through. As it was, the blow was a glancing 

 one, striking me on the knuckle, but it stripped off the flesh to the very bone. I 

 have sometimes heard a great flopping and disturbance in the waters of our Caledonia 

 trout brook at night, and upon going to the place in the morning found heron tracks 

 in the mud, and sometimes a trout from one-half pound to two pounds in weight, and 

 occasionally larger, with a hole in its back or side, into which you could put your finger. 

 I always supposed the fish escaped on account of its being too strong and lively for 

 the heron, although mortally wounded. I have seen as many as a dozen six-inch 

 trout in the throat and stomach of a heron killed in the early morning hours. 



In Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, herons work great injury to the fish 

 culturists. In the government fisheries the regulations prescribe that they must be 

 killed and their roosts destroyed, but in spite of these measures their numbers are 

 seriously large in many places, and owners of ponds trap them with steel traps baited 

 with fish. 



The small green heron and the bittern are also in the list of fish destroyers, but they 

 are less destructive than the night heron on account of their smaller size, but their 

 presence about fish preserves is not at all beneficial and they should be killed. 



Kingfisher. The kingfisher is one of the most active, impudent and persistent of 

 the enemies of fish wherever found, and it is only too abundant for the good of 

 angling. According to Dr. Brehm, the common European kingfisher on the average 

 destroys daily ten or twelve fish, each about as long as a man's finger. In fourteen 

 years a German fish culturist caught upwards of 700 kingfishers near his trout ponds. 

 The bird is equally abundant and quite as destructive in New York, and may be 

 regarded as one of the pests afflicting the fish culturist. 



I have known of upwards of 180 kingfishers being destroyed on one-half mile of 

 Caledonia Spring Creek in one season ; they were shot and trapped. 



