108 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER . 
of watcliing, and I crept softly down to the 
brook. Before I had gone a dozen steps, a huge 
bird sprang from the sedgy growth by the lake 
shore and rose into the air. It was a blue 
heron which had been patrolling the sand within 
forty feet of me. He flew along the shore for 
some distance, then rose and passed over the 
trees towards the north, seeking, no doubt, my 
lonely lake, half a mile away in the forest. 
One morning, when hidden in the alders and 
viburnums which grow at the very foot of the 
big tree, I heard a queer guttural call or grunt 
from the meadow, and the next moment the 
heron stood above me, on the lowest limb of the 
pine. He looked sharply over the meadow and 
the lake, stretched first one leg, then the other, 
then each wing in turn, and finally fell to preen¬ 
ing his blue and gray plumes. Against a pale 
blue sky or ruffled water which mingles blue 
and gray with bits of white, he is marvelously 
well protected by his coloring. No wonder that 
the poor frogs fall a prey to his patient spear¬ 
ing. I kept breathlessly still, and watched this 
largest of our Chocorua birds. It seemed odd 
that the old tree should be a perch for him and 
for the humming-bird. The hummer is three 
and a quarter inches long; the heron spreads 
six feet with his great wings when he flies, and 
measures over four feet when standing. After 
