The Night Heron.
(Nycticorax gríseus.)
The Night Heron nests with large numbers of its congeners in inaccessible spots in the marshes where marshy tracts and broom bush are close together. In such places will be found on each tree as many nests as there is room for. The nest itself is carelessly built of a few branches laid one on another, with a final layer of dry rush and sedge leaves. It contains four or five pale green-blue eggs.
It is not so secluded in its habits as the Bittern, and is not so fond of the broad open ponds and reed beds, but prefers the marshes, especially where there are slimy puddles, alternating with broken rushes, bushes, and trees. In such places it breeds, in great colonies, and watches for its prey, which it obtains from ooze—mud fish and other small fishes, water-rats, lizards, and all kinds of large insects. When flying, it draws in its legs and head, and so scarcely looks like a Heron, but when it settles on a tree, as it often does, draws in its neck and hunches itself up, it greatly resembles a Raven, whence it is sometimes called the “Nightraven.” Also from its voice, which is like the croak of the Raven, and sounds like “Koā,” “Koari,” or “Koay.” Wherever the Night Heron settles it does much harm among the fish. It is not numerous in Germany; in Hungary it is still fairly common, but with the draining of the marshes the number of these birds is likely to decrease.
The Night Heron has been increasing in numbers in the British Islands during the last hundred years, so that it may now be ranked as an annual visitor to this country.
It is about 23 inches in length; wing 12 inches. The crown and nape are black with a green metallic lustre. Brow white, about the base of the beak. Two or three, occasionally four, snow-white feathers, pointing backwards, adorn its crown. The eye is large with a carmine-red iris; the long, pointed beak is black; the back is black with a greenish lustre; neck, wings and tail are ashen-grey. Underparts white, legs reddish-yellow. The female bird is more uniform in colour. The young are speckled, while still in the nest.
The Common Heron (Ardea cinerea) is well distributed throughout Great Britain. There are, as before, when this bird was used in the old Falconry days, very many colonies, although these are not so crowded with nests as they used to be. The long-legged grey fisher is one of the most interesting sights beside our streams and meres. “Judy o’ the Bog” is the name given to the Heron by the peasants in the south of Ireland. Young Herons were much in favour as table birds in the olden times. They are still eaten in some districts, but they are only good at certain seasons, if then; the flesh has mostly a very oily, fishy taste. The good this bird does in devouring water-rats, field-mice, worms and insects is counterbalanced by its depredations amongst the fish where the latter are a consideration.
Let me give here again a presentment of our Common Heron in the Marshlands of Kent. “An empty stomach has caused the Heron to leave his sanctuary in the Scotch firs that close in one end of the now frozen mere, and to come floating down to the river side. He has left bitter weather behind him, at any rate, for out in the west it is a cold steel-grey above, with a glow like that of the northern lights resting on the crests of the distant hills. For once he places caution on one side; one ring round directly over our head, and then he drops and folds his wings by the edge of a bit of water that is not frozen because it runs sharply over some shallows. The grey and white fisher has come here for his supper, knowing well that when waters are icebound, the fish will work up to any open piece of water, or even to a small hole broken through the ice, for air. They must have air; even eels, which are supposed to be able to live anyhow or anywhere.
To prevent him rising I take a wide range out in the water meadows, frozen down nearly two feet in depth; but I might just as well have been saved the trouble for a lot of rooks that have been trying to stock out a last scanty meal before roosting, from some manure heaps—that have been placed there to dress the meadow for the hay crop—come for him as one bird, and the lonely fisher is up and away again to his sanctuary in the fir trees.”[5]