162 
A COWARDLY BIRD. 
At the breeding season tlie Herons resemble the Rooks 
in many of their habits, building, as those' birds do, in high 
trees, generally upon large oaks and tall firs, associating in 
great numbers, and occupying the same spots, and even the 
same trees, year after year. Pennant mentions having 
counted more than eighty nests in one oak at Cressy Hall, 
near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. The large loose nests too, 
which these birds make, resemble those of the Rook ; they 
are fonried of sticks, and lined with wool. The female lays 
four or five eggs of a uniform sea-green colour • incubation 
lasts about twenty-eight days : the young birds are supplied * 
by their parents with food until they are able to fly and 
provide for themselves. Sometimes Herons build in pre- 
cipitous rocks near the coast, as at South Stack lighthouse, 
near Holyhead, and occasionally on the ground among 
reeds and rushes, but mostly, as we have said, it is upon 
tall trees, generally in rural districts and retired spots, 
where, as Bishop Mant tells us : — 
Their broad floors the Heron makes 
On wooded isle and inland lakes, 
Aloft a congregated town ; 
Where in the spare twigs nestling down, 
Hangs clinging from the peopled bough 
Their dull green length of leg. 
In illustration of one of the traits of this bird's character, 
viz., cowardice, we quote the following from * Wayside 
Notes on British Birds,' in ^ Chambers' Journal — 
One of the largest of the wild birds frequenting the woods and 
streams of the North of England is the Heron, whose heavy wing 
and great length of neck and bill, ought, one would think, to make 
it a most formidable antagonist to any feathered foe. And yet there 
is scarcely any other bird that excites the animosity of the Rook 
more, nor one which he will attack with greater virulence. I was 
one day deeply interested in the efforts made by a large Heron, 
sailing heavily through the air, with its long legs trailing behind like 
the ropes from a ship's stern, to escape from an angry Rook, that 
followed it pertinaciously. As it could not hope to escape by flight, 
being a slow though stately flyer, it at last took ignominious refuge 
in a ditch. The Rook then perched itself in a branch of an over- 
hanging tree, and immediately began caw cawing^ which had evi- 
dently more in it than met the human ear ; for a couple of dusky 
friends, far on their way to the neighbouring feeding field, turned 
