In the adult in summer, the head, occiput, cheeks, neck,
and breast are rufous-buff colour, the base of each feather
being white, and the buff-coloured ends being formed of the
loose filaments of the web; from the middle of the back
depends another patch of feathers, the filaments of which
are sufficiently elongated to reach beyond the ends of the
closed wings; these feathers, as also those of the occiput,
and others hanging from the bottom of the neck in front’
are of a rufous-buff colour; all the rest of the plumage is
white, a trifle creamy on the wing-coverts; the lore and
hides golden-pink; the beak reddish at the base, yellow at
the tip ; legs yellowish-red. Length about twenty inches.
Wing, fiom the carpal joint to the tip, nine and a half
inches. Tarsus three inches.
Males and females are alike in plumage, but the latter
are rather smaller, and the plumes are less developed. In
autumn and early winter the rufous plumes are absent.
The young specimen obtained by Montagu is thus described
: “ The length is about twenty inches ; the bill two
inches long to the feathers on the forehead, and of an
orange-yellow; the lore and orbits the same; irides pale
yellow. The whole plumage is snowy white, except the
crown of the head and the upper part of the neck before,
which aie buff: legs three inches and a half long, and one
inch and a half bare space above the joint; these parts are
nearly black, with a tinge of green ; the toes and claws are
of the same colour ; the middle claw pectinated. The skin
is of a very dark colour, almost black, so that on the cheeks
and sides of the neck, where the feathers are thin, it is partly
seen, or at least gives a dingy shade to the white plumage
of those parts. On the back of the head the feathers are a
trifle elongated, but scarcely to be called a crest; on the
lowei pait of the neck before, the feathers are more elongated,
and, though not slender, hang detached over the upper
pait of the breast : the tail when closed is in a slight degree
forked, and so short as to be entirely covered by the wings
when they are folded.”
A r d ea r a l lo id e s , Scopoli.*
THE SQUACCO HEEON.
Ardea comata.
More than forty examples of this little Heron have now
been taken in the British Islands. The earliest mention of
it as a visitor is in the Minutes to the Transactions of the
Linnean Society, iii., where it is recorded, under date of 4th
April, 1797, that Mr. Lambert presented a drawing of a
bird of this species shot at Boyton, in Wiltshire, in 1775.
As might be expected from its distribution on the Continent,
its visits have almost invariably been in spring
* Annus I. Historico-Naturalis, p. 88 (1769).