but my informant explained himself.  The bird, he said, feeds mostly at night, and fares best with the moon to help him.  If the reader would dine off roast blue heron, therefore, as I hope I never shall, let him mind the lunar phases.  But think of the gastronomic ups and downs of a bird that is fat and lean by turns twelve times a year!  Possibly my informant overstated the case; but in any event I would trust the major to bear himself like a philosopher.  If there is any one of God’s creatures that can wait for what he wants, it must be the great blue heron.

I have spoken of his caution.  If he was patrolling a shallow on one side of an oyster-bar,—­at the rate, let us say, of two steps a minute,—­and took it into his head (an inappropriate phrase, as conveying an idea of something like suddenness) to try the water on the other side, he did not spread his wings, as a matter of course, and fly over.  First he put up his head—­an operation that makes another bird of him—­and looked in all directions.  How could he tell what enemy might be lying in wait?  And having alighted on the other side (his manner of alighting is one of his prettiest characteristics), he did not at once draw in his neck till his bill protruded on a level with his body, and resume his labors, but first he looked once more all about him.  It was a good habit to do that, anyhow, and he meant to run no risks.  If “the race of birds was created out of innocent, light-minded men, whose thoughts were directed toward heaven,” according to the word of Plato, then Ardea herodias must long ago have fallen from grace.  I imagine his state of mind to be always like that of our pilgrim fathers in times of Indian massacres.  When they went after the cows or to hoe the corn, they took their guns with them, and turned no corner without a sharp lookout against ambush.  No doubt such a condition of affairs has this advantage, that it makes ennui impossible.  There is always something to live for, if it be only to avoid getting killed.

After this manner did the Hillsborough River majors all behave themselves until my very last walk beside it.  Then I found the exception,—­the exception that is as good as inevitable in the case of any bird, if the observation be carried far enough.  He (or she; there was no telling which it was) stood on the sandy beach, a splendid creature in full nuptial garb, two black plumes nodding jauntily from its crown, and masses of soft elongated feathers draping its back and lower neck.  Nearer and nearer I approached, till I must have been within a hundred feet; but it stood as if on dress parade, exulting to be looked at.  Let us hope it never carried itself thus gayly when the wrong man came along.