Through the gathering gloom of night could be seen a tall blue heron, standing midleg deep in water, obviously catching cold in his reckless disregard for wet feet and consequences.

On this day likewise they took a bird resembling a heron, of a black color with a white tuft on its head, and having webbed feet like a duck.

It seems rather hard to kill herons, but anybody who has tried to preserve trout will agree that herons are the greatest enemies with which the trout-fisher has to contend.

It would be hard to say which surprised me more, the New Smyrna green herons or the St. Augustine sparrow-hawks, which latter treated me very much as I am accustomed to being treated by village-bred robins in Massachusetts.

If the reader would dine off roast blue heron, therefore, as I hope I never shall, let him mind the lunar phases.

"Some modern nations, the French among others," says Monsieur Soyer, "formerly ate the heron, crane, crow, stork, swan, cormorant, and bittern.

At one point the boatman pulled up to a thicket of small willows, bidding me be prepared to see birds in enormous numbers; but we found only a small company of night heronsevidently breeding thereand a green heron.

The same System was adopted for hunting the heron or crane (Fig. 159).

Whereupon he was moved to kiss heron the frost-pink knuckle next to an inky nail.

In a few minutes another falcon was started from the other side of the table, which attacked the heron so fiercely that he brought him down in the middle of the hall.

Among the dainties of the feathered kind, enumerated in this entertainment, Mr. Nichols mentions herons, bitterns, godwites, dotterels, shovelers, curlews, and knots.

Any day's venture will raise from open shallows the great blue heron on his hollow wings.

The hawk, not ready for battle till the prey should be over our heads, circled round and round the heron, constantly striking, but carefully avoiding the coup de grace.

So he left the side of the pool with another sigh, the noise he made sending off the great gray heron, and after a little difficulty he found his way back to the outlaws' camp and his own dinner, which, oddly enough, was not roast buck or fawn, but roast ducks and a fine baked pike, cooked in an earthen oven, with plenty of stuffing.

Further along, a great blue heron was stalking about the edge of a marshy pool, and further still, in a woody swamp, stood three little blue herons, one of them in white plumage.

During the course of my walk, I startled from its repose in one of the rice-fields, a huge blue heron.

CHAPTER XIII A BATTLE IN MID AIR A day or two after the supper of the wren pie, Max bought from a pedler a gray falcon most beautifully marked, with a scarlet head and neck, and we sent our squires to Hymbercourt, asking him to solicit from the duke's seneschal, my Lord de Vergy, permission to strike a heron on the marshes.

For there was water near, as there is everywhere in Florida; and subsequently, in this very place, I met not only the green heron, but three of his relatives,the great blue, the little blue, and the dainty Louisiana, more poetically known (and worthy to wear the name) as the "Lady of the Waters.

Around the house ran a boldly-carved stone parapet, bearing the herons and bulrushes which were the cognisance of the noble race for which the mansion was built.

Lebaut calls the heron a royal viand.

Our forefathers included among the birds which now constitute feathered game the heron, the crane, the crow, the swan, the stork, the cormorant, and the bittern.