It is not always fair to judge from a dead bird what the living bird might have been able to do. But I have tried to comb the plumage of a dead heron with its foot-comb, and have not succeeded.
Another suggestion is that the bird may use it when it holds prey under its feet, as has just been narrated. These suggestions, however, are nothing more than conjectures, but, as they have been the subject of much argument, I have thought it best to mention them.
Sometimes it has happened that the heron has miscalculated its powers, and seized a fish which was too large and powerful to be mastered. Anglers frequently capture fish which bear the marks of the heron’s beak upon their bodies, and in such cases neither the fish nor the heron is any the worse for the struggle.
But when the unmanageable fish has been an eel, the result has, more than once, been disastrous for the bird. In Yarrell’s work on the British birds, a case is recorded where a heron and eel were both found dead, the partially swallowed eel having twisted itself round the neck of the heron in its struggles.
A very similar incident occurred off the coast of Devonshire, the victim in this case being a cormorant. The bird had attacked a conger-eel, and had struck its hooked upper mandible completely through the lower jaw of the fish, the horny beak having entered under the chin of the eel.
The bird could not shake the fish off its beak, and the result was that both were found lying dead on the shore, the powerful conger-eel having coiled itself round the neck of the cormorant and strangled it. The stuffed skins of the bird and eel may be seen in the Truro Museum, preserved in the position in which they were found.
Having procured a sufficiency of prey, the heron will take flight for its home, which will probably be at a considerable distance from its fishing ground. Twenty or thirty miles are but an easy journey for the bird, which measures more than five feet across the expanded wings, and yet barely weighs three pounds. Indeed, in proportion to its bulk, it is believed to be the lightest bird known. The Rev. C. A. Johns states that he has seen the heron fishing at a spot fully fifty miles from any heronry.
The peculiar flight of the heron is graphically described in a letter published in the Standard newspaper, Sept. 25th, 1883.
“One summer evening I was under a wood by the Exe. The sun had set, and from over the wooded hill above bars of golden and rosy cloud stretched out across the sky. The rooks came slowly home to roost, disappearing over the wood, and at the same time the herons approached in exactly the opposite direction, flying from Devon into Somerset, and starting out to feed as the rooks returned home.
“The first heron sailed on steadily at a great height, uttering a loud “caak, caak” at intervals. In a few minutes a second followed, and “caak, caak” sounded again over the river valley.