Life in Our 
H ironies. 
(225) THE BIRD WORLD. 
troutlets, a Throstle, and a mouse. An 
Essex youngster of only four months’ 
experience had stowed away three trout 
averaging ^ lb. each. 
In the Yorkshire Dales. 
Knowing that the Herons assemble at 
their old colonies in March, I took the 
tour of the Yorkshire colonies recently, 
to see how matters were speeding. The 
nests were being rebuilt on some of the 
highest oak trees available, and on the 
slenderest branches. It is the male 
bird’s work to find the twigs—only those 
which contain living sap—and bring 
them to his partner, who interlaces 
them. At the Moreby Hall heronry, 
near York, I saw nearly a dozen flat 
nests boasting the circumference of a 
wagon wheel, each one a mass of oak, 
beech, and larch twigs, lined carelessly 
with rushes and grass, but soon to be 
literally white over with ordure. The 
aesthetic Heron knows nothing what¬ 
ever about constructing an aesthetic nest, 
which is so platform-like and loosely 
made that rain passes almost straight 
through it. Whereas building Rooks 
fly round and round cawing noisily when 
you happen to get too near their nests, 
Herons take their departure with silent 
stealth. Yet when the eggs are laid 
they will not quit without a fight. The 
eggs—four or five to a clutch—are about 
the size of those of the domestic fowl, of 
a beautiful sea-green colour, unglazed, 
and sharply tapered at one end. 
Those that I have seen taken were 
invariably daubed with mud borne 
away on the parent birds’ feet 
after fishing on oozy stream sides, 
thus showing that she does not 
care to wipe her feet before coming 
home. The eggs take three weeks to 
hatch out, and the youngsters—which 
always begin to croak and hiss as night 
comes on—fly when they are six weeks 
old. Two broods are usually reared 
each season. 
“ Gocking and Gutching .” 
I have often watched the aesthetic 
Herons, with their glaring, golden eyes, 
their heavy buff-coloured bills, and slim 
greenish-yellow shanks, standing with 
Stork-like stiltedness on the edges of 
their nests. Singularly awkward do they 
look at such an elevation with their 
short-cropped, dark slate-coloured tail; 
in fact, they appear to be in great dread 
of overbalancing and falling off. All 
the time they are “ gocking and gutch¬ 
ing ” like a party of Geese with parched 
throats, their usual note of exclamation 
being a mere “ Frauk ! ” Through the 
intricate tracery-work of twigs the sun¬ 
light glints on a male bird’s curved, 
snow-white neck and delicate French- 
grey breast feathers, which are superior 
in texture and softness to many expensive 
aigrettes; it lends a new beauty to the 
long plumes of his occipital crest. I 
believe it was Mr. Frank Finn who 
pointed out that the milliner’s so-called 
Osprey plumes were not those of the 
Osprey (Fishing Eagle) at all, but of 
the Heron, or a Continental species of 
Ardea cinerea. The French people 
called these plumes esprit , but English 
milliners could not say esprit quite as 
easily as Osprey, hence the mistake 
which naturalists were for long at a loss 
to explain. 
Shakespeare and the Heron. 
A greater philological grievance here 
occurs to mind. In the Eastern 
Counties one sometimes hears the say¬ 
ing : “ He can’t tell a Hawk from a 
Handsaw.” This is a selection from 
Shakespeare. Hamlet, when pulling old 
Polonius’s leg, remarks with much 
shrewdness that when the wind is in a 
certain quarter “ he knows a Hawk from 
a Handsaw.” Taken too literally, this 
wretched “ Handsaw ” is nonsensically 
incongruous when alliterated with 
“ Hawk,” and methinks it must have 
bothered the Shakespearean com¬ 
mentators not a little. “ Handsaw 
should undoubtedly have been written 
“ Heronshaw,” or “ Herringsew,” by 
which names our Heron was, and still 
is, known in many districts. Hamlet, 
then, knew a Hawk from a Heron on 
mornings favourable for sport. 
As a Weather Prophet. 
That other literary legacy, as to the 
Heron’s varying altitude in flight fore¬ 
boding fair weather or foul, would 
appear to have no foundation in fact. 
c 
