HERONRIES IN THE CLYDE FAUNAL AREA. 379 



is said to be "more than fifty"; and "nearly fifty in Ireland." 

 Mr. R. J. Ussher, one of the authors of the forthcoming work on 

 the Birds of Inland, has records of more than three hundred 

 places in that country which are supposed to contain upwards of 

 four or more nests ; ^ and I have the names of over two hundred 

 nesting localities in Scotland, some of which, however, are 

 deserted, but from certain districts I have no returns or 

 information, so that there may actually be more than the 

 above number of Heronries in Scotland altogether. I may 

 explain that in the course of this paper I shall make what 

 may be called a working use of the term " Heronry," 

 including under it any colony of two or more nests. Prof. 

 Newton points out that when the Heron ceased to be protected, 

 the larger Heronries became broken up, and the smaller though 

 more numerous settlements now in existence are " hardly to be 

 dignified by the name of Heronry," ^ but with the explanation I 

 have made I shall mislead no one, and the details follow. 

 Standard works on ornithology state ^ that comparatively few 

 large Heronries existed in Scotland, and I know of none now 

 like that which flourished at Shaw, on the Dryffe, about one 

 hundred years ago, where it is said of the Heron, "some 

 hundreds are bred yearly." ^ My impression for a considerable 

 time, as to the status of the species in our district, was that indi- 

 vidual birds were surprisingly common and abundant in relation to 

 the number of their reported breeding-places, but the ascertained 

 details which follow somewhat modify this impression. 



1 am indebted to many kind correspondents, whose names are 

 incorporated in my footnotes, for information sent to me at 

 my request, without which assistance I could not have executed 

 my task so thoroughly ; but I must express my particular 

 obligation to Messrs. J. A. Harvie-Brown, John Paterson, and 

 Geo. Rose, who all very generously placed at my disposal MS. 

 material which they themselves had collected bearing on the 



^ R. Bowdler Sharpe : Hand- Booh to the Birds of Great Bi^itaiii (1896), 

 III., p. 70. 



2 Op. cit., p. 418. 



8 Yarrell's British Birds, 4th ed., IV., p. 167. H. Saunders: 

 Manual of British Birds, 2nd ed. , p. 367. 

 * Statistical Account of Scotland (1795), XIII., p. 580. 



