Heron
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Heron. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a wading bird allied to the stork, but more closely akin to the bittern. There are several species in North America . The largest, the great blue heron, fifty inches high, breeds locally as far north as the Arctic Circle . It is incorrectly called the blue crane. The heron flies with head drawn in, the crane with neck stretched out to its full extent. The Gulf States, especially Florida and Louisiana, were the paradise of the smaller herons until the craze for plumes to adorn millinery caused the hunters of the South to slaughter these birds by the thousand. At least five species are found throughout the Mississippi Valley. The heron's nest is a platform of sticks in a bush or tree-top. Eggs three to six. The poet Lowell took delight in a colony of herons that nested in the tree-tops of Elmwood. Each heron has its own fishing ground, but the birds nest at night in "rookeries." Minnows, frogs, and reptiles are favorite food. Some species stand motionless watching for prey, which they transfix with a lightning-like stroke of the long sharp bills. Other species chase about noisily, trusting to catch the confused inhabitants of shallow water by rapid pursuit. In English literature we find frequent mention of taking the heron with a falcon. In England it was esteemed as a table bird, and was protected by game laws. The blue heron of Japan plays an important part in local art. It is of frequent occurrence in the decoration of screens, jars, vases, plaques, and fans. See Falcon Great blue heron. Ardea herodias
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the common name of birds of the genus Ardea, constituting with the bitterns the family Ardeidæ, type of what is now commonly regarded as a separate order of birds, the Herodiones. The herons are very numerous, and almost universally spread over the globe. They are distinguished by having a long bill cleft beneath the eyes, a compressed body, long slender legs naked above the tarsal joint, three toos in front, the two outer united by a membrane, and by moderate wings. The tail is short, rounded, and composed of 10 or 12 feathers. The common heron (A. cinerea) is about three feet in length from the point of the bill to the end of the tail, builds its nest in high trees, many being sometimes on one tree. Its food consists of fish, frogs, mollusks, mice, moles, and similar small animals. The great heron (A. herodias) is an inhabitant of America, and is called also great blue heron; the great white heron or egret (A. or Herodias alba) belongs to Europe; and the green heron (A. virescens), the flesh of which is much esteemed native of North America.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 entry describes the plume trade as an ongoing catastrophe, with Southern hunters killing the smaller herons "by the thousand" for millinery; that trade is over. The Lacey Act of 1900, state plume laws pushed by the Audubon societies, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 shut it down, and snowy egrets and great egrets, once nearly wiped out in Florida and Louisiana, are again common there. The classification has also been rebuilt: Collier's 1921 order Herodiones gave way to Ciconiiformes, and molecular studies published since 2008 have moved the herons again, into the Pelecaniformes alongside the pelicans and ibises. Individual names have shifted too — the great white heron or egret is now Ardea alba, and the green heron is Butorides virescens rather than Ardea virescens — while a newcomer neither account could have known, the cattle egret, spread from Africa across the Americas during the 20th century and reached Florida by the 1940s.
Written for this edition, 2026.