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Black-crowned Night Heron — Part 2
Images coming soon.
Standing motionless, with head drawn in between its shoulders, as it waits at the margin of a pond at evening for the food to come within striking range, the heron can scarcely be distinguished from a crooked stick. However deficient its sight may be, especially by day, an extraordinary keenness of ear detects the first creak of an intruder's foot, and with a quawk, quawk, the bird rises and is off, trailing its legs behind, after the manner of storks that Japanese artists have made so familiar.
Have birds a color sense? A night heron that was seen perching among the gray branches of a native beech tree must have known how perfectly its coat blended with its surroundings, where it was all but invisible to the passers by.
MARSH BIRDS
Cranes
Rails
Gallinules
Coots
MARSH BIRDS
(Order Paludicoloe)
Birds of the plains and marshes, the two families comprising this order have certain resemblances of structure that unite them into a distinct order, however the large cranes, with their long necks and legs, seem to approach more nearly the herons and their allies than they do the small rails, or marsh hens, and their congeners. Cranes, rails, gallinules, and coots, unlike the altricial heron tribe, are precocial; that is, they run at once from the nest, well clothed with down when hatched. These birds have four toes, the three front ones long, to enable the birds to run lightly over the oozy ground; the hallux, or great toe, may be elevated at the back, or, as in the case of gallinules and coots, on the level with the front ones, which in several species are lobate, but not flattened also, or palmate, as the grebes' toes are. Five large, strong muscles give the thighs of birds of this order special prominence, and influence the scientific classification. Shy, suspicious skulkers, more fleet of foot than of wing, these birds escape danger by running and hiding rather than by flying.
Cranes
(Family Gruidoe)
The cranes, as a family, are birds of largest size, seventeen vertebrae being the usual number in their long necks, and their stilt-like legs elevate their compactly feathered bodies to a conspicuous height. Usually the head is partly bare, or covered with hairlike feathers. Bill is long, straight, slender, and strong. Plumage either white or gray. Solitary wanderers over the plains and marshes, the cranes associate in flocks only at the migrations, although sometimes not averse to feeding in company with other birds, like the geese, for example, as suspicious as they. Field mice, snakes, lizards, frogs, berries, and cereals, all are swallowed by these rapacious feeders. Their voice is harsh, croaking, and resonant, and is frequently heard at night.
Sandhill, or Brown Crane.
Whooping Crane.
Rails, Gallinules, Coots
(Family Rallidoe)
The exceedingly shy, skulking rails, or marsh hens, spend their lives hidden among the sedges of marshes, where they run very lightly over the oozy ground, picking up their food from the surface rather than treading it out of the mud with their long toes. Like the gallinules, they associate with their kin where food is abundant rather than from pure sociability. In spite of their short, rounded wings, they cover immense distances in their migrations; but when flushed in the marshes, where they might remain unsuspected did not their voices betray them, they rise a few feet above the sedges, and, dragging their legs after them, quickly drop down among the grasses they are ever loth to leave. All manner of absurd fables about the rails being blown in from sea, and not hatched from eggs, and certain alleged mysteries of their nests, that human eye, it is said, has never looked upon, are palmed off upon the credulous, not only by the superstitious darkies in southern marshes, but by white people of intelligence, also. Rails are birds of medium or small size; their plumage differs little in the sexes or with age or season; the body is compressed to a point in front, but broad and blunt behind, this wedge shaped figure enabling the bird to squeeze through the mazes of aquatic undergrowth where it finds its constant home. "As thin as a rail" is a truly significant term. Gallinules and coots have a bare, horny plate on the forehead; some of the former are superbly colored. They keep more to the muddy shores of lagoons and ponds and less hidden among the sedges than the rails. Graceful walkers, they are good swimmers also, though their toes lack the lobes that enable the coots to pass much of their lives on the water. Coots live in flocks.
Clapper Rail.
King Rail, or Marsh Hen.
Virginia Rail.
Sora, or Carolina Rail.
Yellow Rail.
Little Black Rail.
Common, or Florida Gallinule.
Purple Gallinule.
American Coot, or Mud Hen.
CRANES
(Family Gruidoe)