182
ESSEX HERONRIES.
faction, under the nests, do not add to the beauty or salubrity of the
spot; when the parent herons drop any food intended for their
young, they do not attempt to recover it, indeed it would be a
hopeless attempt in most cases. Of the six pellets I brought home
from Boreham at our second visit, four weighed just over three
ounces and two just under, and the largest measured seven inches in
circumference; they seemed to be composed almost entirely of water
rats' fur most tightly felted together.
Pennant, in the account of his "Tour in Scotland," in 1769,
mentions "the vast" heronry at Cressi Hall, six miles from Spalding,
and tells us "the nests were so crowded together that myself and
the company that was with me counted no fewer than eighty in one
tree (l.c. p. 12). This must have been a big tree; our Essex spruces
will hardly bear one nest. We are told that the weight of the young
herons in their nests in summer (and of the nests themselves when
loaded with snow in winter) was very destructive to the trees, and
many tops were thus broken off. I saw and heard very good evidence
of this.
Col. Montagu tells us that he "once saw a heronry on a small
island in a lake in the north of Scotland, whereon there was only
one scrubby oak tree, which not being sufficient to contain all the
nests, many were placed on the ground" ("Dict. Brit. Birds,"
p. 172). The heron sometimes also breeds on precipitous
rocks. In the "Field" for August 14th, 1886 (p. 274), Mr. W. R.
Ogilvie Grant gives a most graphic account of how he obtained for
the Natural History Museum at South Kensington a nest containing
three almost fully-fledged young birds from the top of a spruce,
seventy feet from the ground, on the slope of Turlem, Strathearn,
Perthshire, said to be the highest pine-clad hill in Scotland. Mr.
Grant also shot the parent birds, and it is from this attractive and
life-like family party as "set up" in the Museum, that the accom-
panying illustration (page 183) was drawn by Miss Maud M. Clarke.
The engraving originally appeared in Mr. R. Bowdler Sharpe's
interesting paper on "Ornithology at South Kensington," in the last
Christmas number of the "English Illustrated Magazine."
The heron was not only protected for sporting purposes in the
days of old, but was also esteemed as a great delicacy for the
table; this is very evident from the records of ancient feasts
that have been handed down to us. One of the most remarkable
was that mentioned by Leland, who tells us that at the feast given