The blue heron nests and hatches with us, although many persons think that he goes far away from the haunts of man for the purpose of nesting. I do not know if he be really the blue heron of the naturalist, but he is a heron to all intents and purposes, and his color is mainly correctly described in his name. He is crested, too, and is withal a most magnificent bird. Not infrequently he stands five feet high, and the spread of his wings is six or seven feet. Any one who will quietly watch beside any of our marshes can easily, this time of the year, find his nest, as he alights unerringly in the same spot. His nest is only the marsh grass pressed down beside some hillock in the bogs, where it is dry. As yet I do not know for a certainty how many young the hen bird produces at a sitting, but I have never seen any more than two in any nest. Speaking of the plover with his long legs being awkward and absurd reminds me to say that perhaps the young heron is the most ridiculous of all birds which frequent our province. His legs are so very abnormally long that they seem almost a malformation, but when one comes to consider the use he makes of them afterwards, as he wades for food, one can see that he is properly formed. But at the same time he is the most absurd, awkward, homely and ill-looking, when young, of all the feathered tribe incubating in Ontario. You must pardon me, reader, for daring to presume to differ from great naturalists when they tell us that he never alights upon trees, for I have seen him alight. Not very far from my residence stands a very large towering water elm. So tall, indeed, is this elm that at night it far overshadows all other trees of the forests about, and among the branches of this elm, being an obstruction, as it would appear, is the herons’ line of flight. I have myself frequently seen them alight, and have tried to get a shot at them when upon the perch. So far as my observation goes, however, they do not long remain upon the perch.