Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/436

408 Further explorations revealed seven more; two of which, however, belonged to Ardea cinerea, the remainder to Ardea purpurea. The nests of both species were identical in structure, and were formed entirely of the dried stems of the surrounding reeds. They were rather shallow, but very bulky; one would have perhaps filled an ordinary clothes-basket. The foundations of the nests rested on broken-down reed-stems, and were on a level with the water. Standing by the side of one I could just comfortably get my chin over the rim of the nest. Those of A. purpurea contained 6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 5 eggs respectively; but those of the larger species, in one case, had young, perhaps a week or ten days old; and the other, three young and two unhatched eggs. This was on the 11th of May. The eggs of A. purpurea in several cases were quite fresh or nearly so, and in others incubated for perhaps a week or thereabouts. Each nest stood in a little clearing, due, as I surmised, to the materials having been gathered by the parent birds close at hand. The Purple Heron appears to be a close sitter, for on my invading the colony the owners did not rise in a body, but got up singly as I approached the nests; though on one occasion when I blew a whistle to re-assure an anxious companion on the bank, two rose very precipitately, but without any cry betokening alarm. All flew off, indeed, without any sound or protest, nor did I hear a single cry from the flock of forty or more individuals, which my companion counted, circling around some two hundred yards above the mere. Some of the latter must have gathered from the surrounding country, as I did not put up anything like this number from amongst the reeds.

In the part of France to which these notes refer the Purple Heron is much commoner than its larger ally, and I estimated that fully ninety per cent. of the Herons I observed were A. purpurea. The latter species is readily distinguishable from A. cinerea, even at a distance, by its smaller size and by its distinctly reddish appearance, due in part to the rufous colour of the scapulary plumes, and also to its chestnut under parts; whilst close at hand the black stripe down the sides of the neck in contrast with the clear grey neck of A. cinerea is very conspicuous.

Most of our recognised authorities,—Dresser, Seebohm, Yarrell, Saunders, &c,—in writing on the nesting habits of the