Red herring

“ I can quite understand that the head of a herring, if swallowed by a greedy young chick, might have a bad effect on it, but that the old birds, through some process of natural selection—for we cannot suppose that they are impelled by ordinary foresight—should have acquired the habit of first decapitating the herrings and thus removing the risk, seems very unlikely. ”

“ On one of the little jutting points, where a log lay half-submerged in trailing water-weeds, stood a tall blue heron balanced motionless on one long, stilt-like leg. Its head, drawn flat back between the high shoulders, came about ten inches above the tops of the sedge. Its long, keen, javelin-like beak lay along its protruding breast, in readiness to dart in any direction. Its round, gem-like eyes, hard as glass in their glitter, took in not only the wide, blue-and-green empty landscape, but equally every movement of the sedge-fringe and the weedy shallows along-shore. ”

“ I believe that a man with four hundred pickled herring about his premises to-day would be mobbed. Pickled herring, scaly, shrunken, wrinkled, discolored, and strung on a stick in the woodshed, undoes every other rank and bilious preserve that I happen to know. One can easily credit the saying, still current in the town, that if a native once eats a Weymouth herring he will never after leave the place. ”

“ The little herring is the most valuable of all the sea fish. Enormous numbers are captured in nets, and still greater numbers form the food of other fish. The herring has so many enemies that it must increase rapidly in order to hold its place in the sea. Nature has arranged that this fish should produce twenty thousand or more eggs at each spawning season. It is thought that if only two eggs out of this great number hatch and grow up, the supply of herring will be maintained. ”

“ A "last" of Herrings is 13,200 fish. A boat sometimes brings in twenty "lasts"; sometimes a boat's nets do not fall in with the "schools" of Herrings, and a night's work may amount to a capful of fish. Between 20,000 and 30,000 "lasts" are taken yearly. The "history and circumstance" of the Herring fishery affords interesting reading. Food is seldom found in the stomachs of Herrings, yet they must devour myriads of Crustacea and Entomostraca. I dissected a six-inch example found on the south beach, April 13th, 1890 ”

“ The commissioners who recently collected information on the Scottish herring-fisheries, assume that in Scotland alone the gannet (a sea-bird) will annually draw on the shoals to the extent of one thousand one hundred and ten million herrings! In addition to dog-fish, cod, gannets, and other sea-birds, the herring has many other enemies; porpoises, seals, coal-fish, and other predaceous fishes are constantly lying in wait to fall upon and devour them. A female herring, we know, yields over thirty thousand eggs; but at the shoaling-time myriads of those eggs are devoured by a variety of enemies ”

“ Very little spawning takes place during late winter and spring, i.e. just after minimum sea temperature. Each local race (or species) appears to spawn at a constant time of the year. The date of the annual spawning, and hence the herring fishing season, varies from point to point round the coast. Herrings caught at different places show well-marked differences in appearance and quality, which are evidently due to differences in species and feeding ground. The food value of the herring will depend also upon the time of the year at which spawning occurs. ”

“ Head and neck, maroon; rest of plumage slaty-blue; plumes on back of head, breast and on the back; eyes yellow; bill and feet greenish. Young birds are white, usually with a tinge of bluish on the forehead and ends of the wings. They can be distinguished from the similar Snowy Herons by the greenish-black legs, while the legs of the latter are black with yellow feet. These little herons are resident and most abundant in the South Atlantic and Gulf States. They are at home in and enjoy the rankest and most impenetrable swamps, where only birds or reptiles can tread with safety. ”

“ This handsome Heron is about four feet in length. Its general color is a bluish gray, relieved by a black crest, primaries and patches on the sides, and a white crown. In the south they breed in large colonies, often in company with many other species. In the northern portions of their range they breed singly or in companies of under a hundred individuals. They generally place their rude platforms of sticks well up in trees, near ponds, swamps or rivers, but in the most northerly parts of their range, where trees are scarce, they often build on the ground. ”

“ HERRING. classes of society. In form it is much compressed, its depth greatly exceeding its thickness. The lower jaw projects considerably beyond the upper; there are a few small teeth on both jaws and the tongue; the eye is large; the line of the belly is sharp, but not notched. The colours when fresh are a fine greenish blue on the upper parts, and on the sides and belly silvery white.
The immense hosts in which this fish assembles at the season when it approaches the shallows to spawn, have given it its common name, Herring being derived from the German heer, an army. ”

“ Amongst the fishes hitherto discovered and classed, the herring (Clupea harengus) is one of the most universally known, most generally useful, and one of the greatest boons of an all-bounteous Providence to the inhabitants of these countries. Abundance, the universal producer of contempt, has caused this beautiful creature to be despised; but to the naturalist’s eye few creatures are possessed of greater charms. When first taken out of the water, it is of a dark-bluish and green colour on the back, lightening down the sides to a silvery blue, which shades to white on the belly. ”

“ On the ground, this bird exhibits none of the grace observed in all the true Herons; it walks in a stooping posture, the neck much retracted, until it sees its prey, when, with a sudden movement, it stretches it out and secures its food. It is never seen standing motionless, waiting for its prey, like the true Herons, but is constantly moving about in search of it. Its feeding places are the sides of ditches, meadows, the shady banks of creeks, bayous, and ponds or rivers, as well as the extensive salt-marshes and mud-bars left exposed at low water ”

“ Up to its knees in water, motionless as a stone, with the neck slightly stretched out, and the eye steadily fixed, but wide awake to the motion of anything that has life, the Heron may be seen in the ford of a river, the margin of a lake, in a sea-side pool, or on the bank of an estuary, a faultless subject for the photographer. Suddenly the head is shot forward with unerring aim; a small fish is captured, crushed to death, and swallowed head foremost; an eel of some size requires different treatment, and is worth the trouble of bringing to land, that it may be beaten to death on the shingle ”

“ Like most of their congeners, they usually pass the night amongst the beds of reeds, which afford them temporary protection from the attacks of the infuriated farmers, by whom incredible numbers are slaughtered, without making any apparent diminution in the flocks, which occasionally may literally be said to darken the sky. Except during the time when the corn is young and tender, the habits of the Red-wing are by no means such as to render them objects of persecution, for they may be seen hopping after the plough, and clearing the field of multitudes of noxious and destructive insects ”

“ They breed and grow all along our coasts, all the year round, as do most kinds of British fish and Crustacea. We have seen the herring in all its stages of growth, from the minute ova to the sizeable summer fish. A jar with herrings newly hatched was lately in our possession, the young fish swimming about like bits of feather or cotton thread, but it is impossible to keep them alive for any length of time, they are so fragile. It would be interesting, however, if herrings could be grown from the egg in presence of our naturalists, as indeed it would be in the case of all other kinds of fish ”

“ The swift vertical flight with which the pursued ascends until it becomes a mere speck in the blue zenith, the hurried zigzag flight of the pursuer, rising every minute above its prey, only to be left below again by a single flap of the Heron’s wings, forms a sight of such grace, beauty, and power, as to fill the mind of the spectator with delight and astonishment.
When the enemy comes to close quarters, the Heron instinctively throws itself belly up to repel the assault with its long, crooked, cutting claws. Raptorial species possess a similar habit ”

“ Should you wish to shoot Herons, you may stand, fire, and pick up your game as long as you please; you may obtain several species, too, for not only does the 91 Great Blue Heron breed there, but the White, and sometimes the Night Heron, as well as the Anhinga, and to such places they return year after year, unless they have been cruelly disturbed. ”

“ It is said that more individuals of the herring (Clupea harengus in the Atlantic, Clupea pallasi in the Pacific) exist than of any other species. The herring is a good food-fish and whenever it runs it is freely sought. According to Björnsön, wherever the school of herring touches the coast of Norway, there a village springs up, and this is true in Scotland, Newfoundland, and [Pg 330] from Killisnoo in Alaska to Otaru in Japan, and to Strielok in Siberia. Goode estimates the herring product of the North Atlantic at 1,500,000,000 pounds annually. In 1881 Professor Huxley used these words ”

“ When wounded, the Great Blue Heron immediately prepares for defence, and woe to the man or dog who incautiously comes within reach of its powerful bill, for that instant he is sure to receive a severe wound, and the risk is so much the greater that birds of this species commonly aim at the eye. If beaten with a pole or long stick, they throw themselves on their back, cry aloud, and strike with their bill and claws with great force. I have shot some on trees, which, although quite dead, clung by their claws for a considerable time before they fell. ”

“ Herons build their nests in the upper branches of tall trees, making them of sticks and twigs, lined with grass and roots. A number of these birds generally nest together in the same clump of trees, just as rooks do, and in each nest are laid either three or four bluish-green eggs, without any markings at all.
If a heron is attacked, it uses its long, dagger-like beak with great readiness, and always tries to strike at the eyes of its enemy. Herons are of many kinds, the great blue one being the finest of the tribe. ”

“ The heron frequents the neighborhood of rivers and lakes. Almost always solitary, it remains for hours motionless on the same spot. When seeking the fish or frogs on which it chiefly feeds, the heron wades into the water, folds its long neck partially over its back and forward again, and with watchful eye waits till a fish comes within reach of its beak, when it darts its head into the water and secures its slimy, slippery prey. ”

“ The heron is sometimes spoken of as our largest wild bird. It is not meant that he is really larger than the golden eagle, or wild swan, or grey lag goose, but only that he is the biggest of the comparatively common birds. The heron has two very different aspects—when in repose, or standing, and when on the wing. On the ground, or, as we more often see him, standing knee-deep in the water, watching the surface, he presents a sorry appearance—a bird lean and ungraceful in figure, white and ghostly grey in colour, awkward in his motions when he moves. ”

“ The reddish-chestnut colour on their necks fades into the brownish-ash of their under parts, divided by a line of dark spots on the white throat that widen on the breast. Although the little green heron is the smallest member of this tribe of large birds that we see in the Northern States and Canada, it is about a foot and a half long, larger than any bird, except one of its own cousins, that you are likely to see in its marshy haunts. ”

“ The Green Herons feed all day long, but, as I think, rarely at night. Their food consists of frogs, fishes, snails, tadpoles, water lizards, crabs, and small quadrupeds, all of which they procure without much exertion, they being abundant in the places to which they usually resort. Their gait is light but firm. During the love-season they exhibit many curious gestures, erecting all the feathers of their neck, swelling their throat, and uttering a rough guttural note like qua, qua, several times repeated by the male as he struts before the female. ”

“ It is sincerely to be hoped that the evil eye of “Dame Fashion” will not fall upon this bird, and cause its extermination.
The Great White Heron, (Ardea americana) , is taller than the great blue heron, and it is the largest of all the white herons and egrets. Like the whooping crane, it is now a bird of such exceeding rarity that the procuring of a specimen may be counted a stroke of good fortune. In eight 139 years the Zoological Park has secured only three specimens, all of which came from southern Florida. ”

“ The "Blue Crane" of the country dwellers is the "White-fronted Heron" of the bird-lover. "Fronted" in a bird name refers only to the forehead. Herons are valuable birds to the grazier, farmer, and irrigationist, for, in addition to insects and snails, they eat yabbies (fresh-water crayfish) , which bore into the banks and bed of irrigation channels, and so cause much loss of water by soakage.
Distinguished from these birds mainly by its nocturnal habit is the interesting Nankeen Night Heron, our one representative of a practically cosmopolitan genus. ”