32 
GREAT HERON. 
Bald Eagle attack and tease the Great Heron ; but whether for 
sport, or to make him disgorge his fish, I am uncertain. 
The common Heron of Europe (Ardea major) very much re- 
sembles the present, and might, as usual, have probably been rank- 
ed as the original stock, of which the present is a mere degenerated 
species, were it not that the American is greatly superior in size and 
weight to the European species, the former measuring four feet four 
inches, and weighing upwards of seven pounds ; the latter three feet 
three inches, and rarely weighing more than four pounds. Yet with 
the exception of size, and the rust-colored thighs of the present, 
they are extremely alike. The common Heron of Europe, how- 
ever, is not an inhabitant of the United States. 
The Great Heron does not receive his full plumage during 
the first season, nor until the summer of the second. In the first 
season the young birds are entirely destitute of the white plumage 
of the crown, and the long pointed feathers of the back, shoulders, 
and breast. In this dress I have frequently shot them in autumn. 
But in the third year, both males and females have assumed their 
complete dress, and, contrary to all the European accounts which 
I have met with, both are then so nearly alike in color and mark- 
ings, as scarcely to be distinguished from each other ; both having 
the long flowing crest, and all the ornamental white pointed plu- 
mage of the back and breast. Indeed this sameness in the plumage 
of the males and females, when arrived at their perfect state, is a 
characteristic of the whole of the genus with which I am acquainted. 
AVhether it be different with those of Europe, or that the young 
and imperfect birds have been hitherto mistaken for females I will 
not pretend to say, tho I think the latter conjecture highly proba- 
ble, as the Night Raven (Ardea nycticorax) has been known in 
Europe for several centuries, and yet in all their accounts the same- 
ness of the colors and plumage of the male and female of that bird 
is nowhere mentioned ; on the contrary, the young or yearling 
bird has been universally described as the female. 
