The above is a general picture of herons in a heronry. It is almost more interesting to watch two lonely-sitting birds, upon each of whom, in turn, one can concentrate the attention. They sit so long and so silently, such hours go by, during which nothing happens, and one can only just see the yellow, spear-like beak of the sitting bird pointing upwards amidst the sticks. Only under such circumstances can one really hug oneself in that ecstacy of patience which, almost as much as what one actually sees, is the true joy of watching. But at length comes that for which one has been waiting, and may wait and wait, day after day, and yet, perhaps, not see—the change upon the nest. It comes—“Go not, happy day.” There is a loud croak or two in the air, then a welcoming scream, and in answer to it, as her mate flies in, the sitting bird raises herself on the nest, and stretching her long neck straight up—perpendicularly almost, and with the head and beak all in one line with it—pours out a wonderful jubilee of exultant sounds. Then, standing on the nest together, vis-à-vis, and with their necks raised, both the birds intone hoarsely, and seem to glare at one another with their great golden eyes. Then the male bends down his head, raises his crest, snaps his bill several times, and, sinking down, disappears into the nest; whilst the female, after giving all her feathers and every portion of her person a very violent shake, as though to scatter night and sleep to the four winds, immediately flies off. The whole magnificent scene has lasted but a few seconds. As by magic, then, it is gone, and this quickness in departing has a strange effect upon one. The thing was so real, so painted there, as it were—the two great birds, with their orange bills and pale-bright colouring, clear in the morning air. It did not seem as if they could vanish like that. They looked like permanent things, not vanishing dreams. Yet before the eye is satisfied with seeing, or the ear with hearing, the one has flown off silently like a shadow and the other sunk as silently into invisibility. Now there is a great stillness, a great void, and the contrast of it with the flashed vividness of what has just been, impresses itself strangely. It is as though one had walked to some striking canvas of Landseer or Snider, and, as one looked, found it gone. That, however, would be magic. This is not, but it seems so. One feels as though “cheated by dissembling nature.”
I have described the welcoming cry raised by the female heron on the arrival of her mate as “a jubilee of exultant sounds,” which indeed it is, or sounds like; but what these sounds are—or were—their vocalic value—it is difficult to recall, even but a few minutes after they have been uttered. Only one knows that they were harshly, screamingly musical, for surely sounds full of poetry must be musical. The actions, however—the alighting of the one bird with outstretched neck, the leaping up at him, as one may almost say, with the marvellous pose, of the other, the vigorous shake, in which inaction was done with, and active life begun, and then that searching, careful contemplation of the nest by the male, before sinking down upon it—all that is stamped upon the memory, and will pass before me, many a night, again, as I lie and look into the dark.
It is the female heron, one may, perhaps, assume, who sits all night upon the nest, being relieved by the male in the morning. The first change, in my experience, takes place between 6 and 9. The next is in the afternoon—from 4 to 5, or thereabouts—and there is no other till the following day. Well, therefore, may the mother bird shake herself before flying swiftly off, after her long silent vigil. Perhaps, however, as darkness reigns during most of this time it is the male heron who really shows most patience, since his hours of duty include the greater part of the day.
It must not be supposed that the above is a description of what uniformly takes place when a pair of sitting herons make their change upon the nest. On the contrary, the actions of both birds vary greatly, and this is my experience in regard to almost everything that birds do. Sometimes the scene is far less striking, at other times it is just as striking, but all the details are different—other cries, other posturings, all so marked and salient that one might suppose each to be as invariable as it is proper to the occasion. The same general character is, of course, impressed upon them all, but with this the similarity is exhausted. This—and it is largely the case, I think, in other matters—makes any general description of little value. My own view is that, in describing anything an animal does, it is best to pick a case, and give a verbal photograph. Two advantages belong to this process. First, it will be an actual record of fact, as far as it goes, and, in the second place, it will also be a better general description than one given on any other principle. There will be more truth in it, looked at as either the one thing or the other.
The particular pair of herons that supplied me with this particular photograph had a plantation to themselves for their nest—at least, though other herons sometimes visited it, they were the only ones that bred there. I watched them from a little wigwam of boughs that I had put against the trunk of a neighbouring tree, from which there was a good view. They had built in the summit of a tall and shapely larch, and beautiful it was to look up and see nest and bird and the high tree-top set in a ring of lovely blue, so soft and warm-looking that it made one long to be there. The air looked pure and delicate, and the sun shone warmly down upon the nest and its patient occupant. But the weather was not always like this. Once there was a hurricane. The tree, with the nest in it, swayed backwards and forwards in the violent gusts of wind, and now and again there was the crash and tearing sound of a trunk snapped, or a large branch torn off. But the heron sat firm and secure. There were several such crashes, nor was it much to be wondered at, the plantation being full of quite rotten birches that I might almost have pushed over, myself. In a famous gale here, one Sunday, the firs in many of the plantations were blown down in rows and phalanxes, falling all together as they had stood, and all one way, so that, to see them, it looked as though a herd of elephants—or rather mammoths—had rushed through the place. A tin church was carried away, too—but I was in Belgium during all this stirring time.
A close, firm sitter was this heron, yet not to be compared with White’s raven, since the entry of any one into the plantation was sufficient to make her leave the nest. Unfortunately, the nest almost hid her, as she sat, yet sometimes, as a reward for patience, she would move the head, by which I saw it—or at least the beak—a little more plainly. Sometimes, too, she would crane her neck into the air or even stand up in the nest, which was as if a saint had entered the shrine. When she did this it was always to look at the eggs, and, having done so, she would turn a little round, before sitting down on them again. Very rarely I caught a very low and very hoarse note—monosyllabic, a sort of croak—but silence almost always reigned. At first, when I came to watch the nest, I disturbed the bird each time, and again on leaving: afterwards I used to crawl up to the wigwam, and then retire from it on my hands and knees, and, in this way, did not alarm her. Once in the wigwam, her suspicions soon ceased, and she returned to the nest, usually from sailing high over the plantation, evidently on the watch, but, sheltered as I was, I was invisible even to her keen sight. On one occasion she flew out over the marshlands, and went down upon them. I left the plantation almost at the same time as she did, and, on my way home, I saw her rise and fly towards it again. Halfway there she was joined by her mate, and the two descended upon it, together, most grandly—a really striking sight. Slowly they sailed up, on broad light wings that beat the air with regular and leisurely strokes. Mounting higher and higher, as they neared the plantation, they, at length, wheeled over it at a giddy height, from which, after a few great circling sweeps, they all at once let themselves drop, holding their wings still spread, but raised above their backs, so as not to offer so much resistance to the air. At the proper moment the wide wings drooped again, the rushing fall was checked, and with harsh, wild screams, the two great birds came wheeling down, in narrower and narrower circles, upon the chosen spot. Perhaps the swoop of an eagle may be grander than this, but I doubt it. The drop, especially, gives one, in imagination, the same sort of half-painful sensation that the descent part of a switchback railway does, when one is in it—for one substitutes oneself for the bird, but retains one’s own constitution.
A GRAND DESCENT
Herons coming down on to Nest
Earlier in the year—in cold bleak February—I used to watch this same pair of herons pursuing one another, in nuptial flight, over the half-sandy, half-marshy wastes, that, with the moorland, lie about the lonely, sombre spot that they had chosen for their home. This, too, is “a sight for sair een.” How grandly the birds move “aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,” beating it with slow measured strokes of those “sail-broad vans” of theirs. They approach, then glide apart, and, as they sweep in circles, tilt themselves oddly from one side to another, so that now their upper, and now their under surface catches the cold gloomy light—a fine sight beneath the snow-clouds. With a shriek one comes swooping round upon the other, who, almost in the moment of contact, glides smoothly away from him. The pursuer plies his wings: slow-beating, swift-moving, they pass over the desolate waste, one but just behind the other. Again a “wild, wild” cry from the pursuing bird is answered by another from the one pursued, and then, on set sails, they sink to earth, in a long, smooth, gently descending line, reaching it without another wing-beat. Queer figures they make when they get there. One sits as though on the nest, his long legs being quite invisible beneath him. The other stands in varying attitudes, but all very different from anything one ever sees represented, either in a picture or a glass case. That elegant letter S, which—especially under the latter hateful condition—the neck is, of custom, put into, occurs in the living bird less frequently than one might suppose it would. When resting or doing nothing in particular, herons draw the head right in between the shoulders—or rather wings—which latter droop idly down, and being, thus, partially expanded, like a fan fallen open, cover, with their broad surface, the whole body and most of the legs. The thighs, so carefully shown in the cases, are quite hidden, and only about half the shank is seen beyond the square, blunt ends of the wings. The beak points straight forward, or almost so. It is a loose, hunched-up pose, not elegant, but very nice; one can smack one’s lips over it; it is like a style in writing—a little slipshod perhaps, like Scott’s, as we are told;[12] but then give me Scott’s “slipshod”(!) style—I prefer it to Stevenson’s, though Stevenson himself did not. Then, again, when the bird is alarmed or thrown on the alert about anything, the long neck is shot, suddenly, forward and upward, not, however, in a curve, but in a straight line, from the end of which another straight line—the head and beak—flies out at a right angle. The neck, also, makes a somewhat abrupt angle with the body, and the whole has a strange, uncouth aspect, which is infinitely pleasing.
One might suppose that, with its great surface of wing, and the slowness with which it is moved, the heron would rise with some difficulty—as does the condor—and only attain ease and power when at some little height. This, however, is not the case. It will rise, on occasions, with a single flap of the great wings, and then float buoyantly, but just above the ground, not higher than its leg’s length—if this can be said to be rising at all. A single flap will take it twenty paces, or more, like this, when, putting its legs down, it stands again, and thus it will continue as long as it sees fit.