I4i 
AN HUNGARIAN HERONRY. 
and the birds then assemble in a little republic, called a heronry — 
regularly taking up their abode in the same place year after year, 
if left undisturbed. England, however, is growing too busy and too 
populous for the heron. His solitudes, his sylvan retreats and bowery 
nooks of seclusion, are every year gi-owing fewer ; and soon, if a man 
wish to play the hermit, or a heron to indulge his natural love of 
retirement, he will be driven to the remote recesses of the Cumbrian 
hills or the Scottish Highlands. Probably, therefore, no one of our 
readers will have fallen in with the singular and interesting spectacle 
a heronry presents. The following description of an Hungarian one, 
borrowed from Baldamus, will possess the attraction of novelty : — 
It is the early part of June ; the whispering reeds are six to seven 
feet high, and overspread the gloomy waters of the morass. Wlierever 
the eye ranges it sees only an immense plain, without a single con- 
spicuous landmark to arrest the gaze. But upon this boundless 
expanse of green and blue are visible certain forms, superbly varied 
with white, yellow, gray, black : egrets, purple herons, ash-coloured 
herons, spoonbills, gulls, terns, ibises, cormorants, geese, pelicans. On 
the willows and poplars which rise here and there, the herons have 
built their nests. One of the colonies occupies a space of several 
thousand feet in diameter, and the nests are distributed among one 
hundred to one hundred and fifty willows ; several of the trees bearing 
ten to twenty nests each. On the strongest branches of the tallest 
willows are found the nests of the ash-coloured herons; then, side b}' 
side, and frequently in actual contact with them, those of the night- 
herons; higher up, on the weaker branches, rest those of the black 
cormorant ; while the lowest boughs support those of the ardettas. 
In such a scene it is entertaining to watch the various habits of 
the birds. Now the night-herons descend from the tree-tops to their 
nests: they have this or that to arrange, and the position of their 
eggs to alter. They return home from excursions in all directions, 
opening wide their capacious red throats as a menace against any 
intrusive neighbour, and filling the air with their hoarse, grating cries. 
Next come the garzettas, with silent wing; one carrying in his bill a 
dry twig, another leaping from branch to branch to gain her bower. 
