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COMMON NIGHT -HERON. 
not know of any instance of its breeding with us. 
In habits they are nocturnal, frequenting marshes, 
where brush or rank herbage abounds, and there 
skulking in the day time ; feeding in the evening, 
twilight, or in light nights, and supporting themselves 
chiefly on fish or aquatic reptiles. Several instances 
of their capture in the English counties occur ; but, 
in Scotland, when the pair which were killed at 
Hirsel, the seat of the Earl of Home, were presented 
to the Edinburgh Museum, they were accounted 
great rarities. That nobleman, who is a keen sports- 
man, has several large preserves of water on his 
grounds, skirted with willows and tall reeds ; and, 
we believe, that it was on the margin of one of these 
where the pair of birds was shot. A specimen in 
our own collection was obtained just after it had 
been skinned, and had been killed a day or two 
previously on the banks of the Cluden, a tributary 
to the river Nith in Dumfries-shire. In Ireland, 
Mr. Thompson records its capture twice ; one, a 
specimen sent from Letterkenny to Dublin; the 
second, in the plumage of the young bird, was killed 
in the county of Armagh, and was presented to the 
Belfast Museum. 
In North America, the Night-Heron, or as it is 
there termed, the “ Qua Bird," is in some parts 
migratory; during the season of incubation it is 
gregarious, and breeds together in the inundated 
swamps, the stagnant pools near the rice plantations, 
and on the low islands clothed with evergreen trees. 
The nests are placed sometimes on bushes, some- 
