s voice of the
night, which one never thinks of associating with the quiet, patient,
long-legged fisherman that one may see any summer day along the borders
of lonely lake or stream. A score of times I have been asked by old
campers, "What is that?" as a sharp, questioning _Quoskh-quoskh?_ seemed
to tumble down into the sleeping lake. Yet they knew the great blue
heron perfectly--or thought they did.

Quoskh has other names, however, which describe his attributes and
doings. Sometimes, when fishing alongshore with my Indian at the paddle,
the canoe would push its nose silently around a point, and I would see
the heron's heavy slanting flight already halfway up to the tree-tops,
long before our coming had been suspected by the watchful little mother
sheldrake, or even by the deer feeding close at hand among the lily
pads. Then Simmo, who could never surprise one of the great birds
however silently he paddled, would mutter something which sounded like
_Quoskh K'sobeqh_, Quoskh the Keen Eyed. At other times, when we noticed
him spearing frogs with his long bill, Simmo, who could not endure the
sight of a frog's leg on my fry pan, would speak of him disdainfully in
his own musical language as Quoskh the Frog Eater, for my especial
benefit. Again, if I stopped casting suddenly at the deep trout pool
opposite a grassy shore, to follow with my eyes a tall, gray-blue shadow
on stilts moving dimly alongshore in seven-league-boot strides for the
next bog, where frogs were plenty, Simmo would point with his paddle and
say: "See, Ol' Fader Longlegs go catch-um more frogs for his babies.
Funny kin' babies dat, eat-um bullfrog; don' chu tink so?"

Of all his names--and there were many more that I picked up from
watching him in a summer's outing--"Old Father Longlegs" seemed always
the most appropriate. There is a suggestion of hoary antiquity about
this solemn wader of our lakes and streams. Indeed, of all birds he is
the nearest to those ancient, uncouth monsters which Nature made to
people our earth in its uncouth infancy. Other herons and bitterns have
grown smaller and more graceful, with shorter legs and necks, to suit
our diminishing rivers and our changed landscape. Quoskh is also,
undoubtedly, much smaller than he once was; but still his legs and neck
are disproportionately long, when one thinks of the waters he wades and
the nest he builds; and the tracks he leaves in the mud are startlingly
like those fossilized footprints