8o 
WADING BIRDS. 
Grasshoppers, other large insects, and particularly dragon-flies 
they are very expert at striking, and occasionally feed upon 
the seeds of the pond-lilies contiguous to their usual haunts. 
Our species, in all probability, as well as the European Heron, 
at times also preys upon young birds which may be acciden- 
tally straggling near their solitary retreats. The foreign kind 
has been known to swallow young snipes and other birds 
when they happen to come conveniently within reach. 
The Heron, though sedate in its movements, flies out with 
peculiar ease, often ascending high and proceeding far in its 
annual migrations. When it leaves the coast and traces on 
wing the meanders of the creek or river, it is believed to 
prognosticate rain ; and when it proceeds downwards, dry 
weather. From its timorous vigilance and wildness it is very 
difficult to approach it with a gun ; and unheeded as a depre- 
dator on the scaly fry, it is never sought but as an object of 
food, and for this purpose the young are generally preferred. 
The present is very nearly related to the Common Heron 
of Europe, which appears to be much more gregarious at its 
breeding-places than ours ; for Pennant mentions having seen 
as many as eighty nests on one tree, and Montague saw a 
heronry on a small island in a lake in the north of Scotland 
whereon there was only one scrubby oak-tree, which being 
insufficient to contain all the nests, many were placed on the 
ground sooner than the favorite situation should be abandoned. 
The decline in the amusement of hawking has now occasioned 
but little attention to the preservation of heronries, so that 
nine or ten of these nurseries are nearly all that are known to 
exist at present in Great Britain. “ Not to know a Hawk from 
a Ileronshaw ” (the former name for a Heron) was an old 
adage which arose when the diversion of Heron-hawking was 
in high fashion ; and it has since been corrupted into the ab- 
surd vulgar proverb, “ not to know a hawk from a handsaw ” ! 
As the Rooks are very tenacious of their eyries, and piratical to 
all their feathered neighbors, it might be expected that they 
would at times prove bad and encroaching neighbors to the 
quiet Herons ; and I have been credibly informed by a friend 
