ESSEX HERONRIES.
185
"In dissecting a heron I found in its stomach an old cock blackbird,
almost entire and partly decomposed, and a water-rat minus the tail.
Having kept the heron in a state of domestication, I am aware it
will refuse scarcely anything at all resembling food ; one I had about
two years ago would swallow almost anything offered it—small birds
(both alive and dead), mice, rats, pieces of animal flesh, bits of
leather, boot-laces, paper, string, etc. Mr. Johns ("British Birds and
their Haunts," edit. 1862, p. 407, note) mentions a tame heron which
was wont to perch on an old carriage-wheel in the corner of a court-
yard, and to lie in wait for sparrows and martins. Dr. P. Neill, of
Cannonmills, near Edinburgh, had a pair of tame herons, "which he
found devoured the young of the moorhens which built and reared
their young on an old willow stump that had fallen into the pond"
("Nat.," i., 61).
Many instances of the boldness of herons in attacking their prey
are recorded. Mr. Wood, of Admiston Hall, Piddletown, Dorset,
was about to pick up a snipe he had shot, "when a heron, which he
had not previously seen, pounced upon it, shook it in his bill like a
dog with a rat, evidently not satisfied that it had received its death-
blow, and was just about to make a mouthful of the said snipe"
("Naturalist," i., 61). Mr. A. J. Clark-Kennedy in January, 1875,
near Snape, Norfolk, saw "a heron strike down a dunlin as it rose
from a ditch, and, having disabled it, was flying off with the unfor-
tunate bird when a man on the other side of the river shouting out
caused it to drop its prey, which he secured for himself. On the
next day, and near the same place, another—or perhaps the same—
heron, while flying slowly along the river bank, suddenly darted at
and seized a snipe as it was flying quickly by, and carried it off in
triumph" ("Zool.," 2nd ser., 4341). Mr. Harting relates ("Sketches
of Bird Life," pp. 261-9) how a tame heron killed and subsequently
pouched a predatory rat, and figures a heron whose great inclination
to attack his red setter dog cost the bird its life. One of my men
once saw a heron catch a starling and fly off with it.
With many sportsmen the heron bears a bad reputation, as indeed
does every flying or creeping thing that may rightfully or wrongfully
be suspected of interfering with their own pet "sport." In a late
number of the "Field" we read :—"Herons, too, are a perfect
nuisance in this neighbourhood. They seem of no manner of use,
and are far too shy to be of any value as an ornament. I hardly
pass a day on the river without seeing many fish, some up to 1-lb.,