GREAT BLUE HERON
Standing motionless as the sphinx, with his neck drawn in until his crested head rests between his angular shoulders, the big, long-legged, bluish-gray heron depends upon his stillness and protective colouring to escape the notice of his prey, and of his human foes (for he has no others). In spite of his size—and he stands four feet high without stockings—it takes the sharpest eyes to detect him as he waits in [{257}] some shallow pool among the sedges along the creek or river side, silently, solemnly, hour after hour, for a little fish, frog, lizard, snake, or some large insect to come within striking distance. With a sudden stroke of his long, strong, sharp bill, he either snaps up his victim, or runs it through. A fish will be tossed in the air before being swallowed, head downward, that the fins may not scratch his very long, slender throat. When you are eating ice cream, don't you wish your throat were as long as this heron's?
A gunner, who wantonly shoots at any living target, will usually try to excuse himself for striking down this stately, picturesque bird into a useless mass of flesh and feathers, by saying that herons help themselves to too many fish. (He forgets about all the mice and reptiles they destroy.) But perhaps birds, as well as men, are entitled to a fair share of the good things of the Creator. Some people would prefer the sight of this majestic bird to the small, worthless fish he eats. What do you think about protecting him by law? Any one may shoot him now. The broad side of a barn would be about as good a test of a marksman's skill.
The evil that birds do surely lives after them; the good they do for us is far too little appreciated. Almost the last snowy heron and [{258}] the last egret of Southern swamps have yielded their bodies to the knife of the plume hunter, who cuts out the exquisite decorations these birds wear during the nesting season. Inasmuch as all the heron babies depend upon their parents through an unusually long, helpless infancy, the little orphans are left to die by starvation. For what end is the slaughter of the innocents? Merely that the unthinking heads of vain women may be decked out with aigrettes! Don't blame the poor hunters too much when the plumes are worth their weight in gold.
LITTLE GREEN HERON
Called also: Poke; Chuckle-head
This most abundant member of his tropical tribe that spends the summer with us, is a shy, solitary bird of the swamps where you would lose your rubber boots in the quagmire if you attempted to know him too intimately. But you may catch a glimpse of him as he wades about the edge of a pond or creek with slow, calculated steps, looking for his supper. All herons become more active toward evening because their prey does. By day, this heron, like his big, blue cousin, might be mistaken for a stump or snag among the sedges and bushes by the waterside, so dark and still is he.
A flock of friendly sandpipers and turnstones in wading.
One little sandpiper.
The coot.
Herons are accused of the tropical vice of laziness; but surely a bird that travels from northern Canada to the tropics and back again every year to earn its living, as the little green heron does, is not altogether lazy. Startle him, and he springs into the air with a loud squawk, flapping his broad wings and trailing his greenish-yellow legs behind him, like the storks you see painted on Japanese fans.
He and his mate have long, dark-green crests on their odd-shaped, receding heads and some lengthened, pointed feathers between the shoulders of their green or grayish-green hunched backs. Their figures are rather queer. The reddish-chestnut colour on their necks fades into the brownish-ash of their under parts, divided by a line of dark spots on the white throat that widen on the breast. Although the little green heron is the smallest member of this tribe of large birds that we see in the Northern States and Canada, it is about a foot and a half long, larger than any bird, except one of its own cousins, that you are likely to see in its marshy haunts.
Unlike many of their kind a pair of these herons prefer to build their rickety nests apart by themselves rather in one of those large, sociable, noisy and noisome colonies which we [{260}] associate with the heron tribe. Flocking is sometimes a fatal habit.
BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON
Called also: Quawk; Qua Bird
When the night herons return to us from the South in April, they go straight to the home of their ancestors, to which they are devotedly attached—rickety, ramshackle heronries, mere bundles of sticks in the tops of trees in some swamp—and begin at once to repair them. The cuckoo's and the dove's nests are fine pieces of architecture compared with a heron's. Is it not a wonder that the helpless heron babies do not tumble through the loose twigs? When they are old enough to climb around their latticed nursery, they still make no attempt to leave it, and several more weeks must pass before they attempt to fly. If there is an ancient heronry in your neighbourhood, as there is in mine, don't attempt to visit the untidy, ill-smelling place on a hot day. One would like to spray the entire colony with a deodoriser.
Thanks to the night heron's habits that keep him concealed by day when gunners are abroad, a few large heronries still exist within an hour's ride of New York, in spite of much persecution.
The little green heron: the smallest and most abundant member of his tribe.
Half-grown little green herons on dress parade.
Unlike the solitary little green cousin, the black-crowned heron delights in company, and a hundred noisy pairs may choose to nest in some favourite spot. How they squawk over their petty quarrels! Wilson likened the noise to that of "two or three hundred Indians choking one another."
Only when they have young fledglings to feed do these herons hunt for food in broad daylight. But as the light fades they become increasingly active and noisy; even after it is pitch dark, when the fishermen go eeling, you may hear them quawking continually as they fly up and down the creek. Big, pearly-gray birds (they stand fully two feet high) with black-crowned heads, from which their long, narrow, white wedding feathers fall over the black top of the back, the night herons so harmonise with the twilight as to seem a part of it.
AMERICAN BITTERN
Called also: Stake-driver; Poke; Freckled Heron; Booming Bittern; Indian Hen.
Even if you have never seen this shy hermit of large swamps and marshy meadows you must know him by his remarkable "barbaric yawp." Not a muscle does this brown and blackish and [{262}] buff freckled fellow move as he stands waiting for prey to come within striking distance of what appears to be a dead stump. Sometimes he stands with his head drawn in until it rests on his back; or, he may hold his head erect and pointed upward when he looks like a sharp snag. While he meditates pleasantly on the flavour of a coming dinner, he suddenly snaps and gulps, filling his lungs with air, then loudly bellows forth the most unmusical bird cry you are ever likely to hear. You may recognise it across the marsh half a mile away or more. A nauseated child would go through no more convulsive gestures than this happy hermit makes every time he lifts up his voice to call, pump-er-lunk, pump-er-hmk, pump-er-lunk. Still another noise has earned him one of his many popular names because it sounds like a stake being driven into the mud.
A booming bittern I know sits hour after hour, almost every day in summer, year after year, on a dark, decaying pile of an old dock in the creek. Our canoe glides over the water so silently it rarely disturbs him. The timid bird relies on his protective colouring to conceal him in so exposed a place and profits by his fearlessness in broad daylight next to an excellent feeding ground. At low tide he walks about sedately on the muddy flats treading out a dinner. Kingfishers rattle up and down the [{263}] creek, cackling rails hide in the sedges behind it, red-winged blackbirds flute above the phalanxes of rushes on its banks: but the bittern makes more noise, especially toward evening, than all the other inhabitants of the swampy meadows except the frogs, whose voices he forever silences when he can. Frogs, legs and all, are his favourite delicacy.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FASTEST FLYERS
Canada Goose
Wild Ducks
Herring Gull