446 ARDEA CINEREA. 



sometimes crowded together in great numbers, generally 

 on the highest trees in the place, but in some instances on 

 such as one might think not Avell selected for security, or 

 even on an isolated tree of no great height. The eggs, from 

 three to five in number, are of a light bluish-green colour, 

 broadly elliptical, or having both ends nearly equally rounded* 

 two inches and a quarter in length, an inch and nine-twelfths 

 in breadth. Incubation continues about twenty days ; and 

 the young, at first sparsely covered with tufts of down, 

 remain about six weeks in the nest. 



It is stated by Mr. Yarrell, that " sometimes Herons 

 build on precipitous rocks near the coast, as at South Stack 

 Lighthouse, near Holyhead, mentioned by Mr. Eyton, and 

 at the Great Orme's Head; they are said also to build 

 occasionally on the ground, among reeds and rushes." Mr. 

 St. John, in his Field Sports of the Highlands, p. 123, 

 mentions a heronry on the rocks at the entrance of the Bay 

 of Cromarty : — " Above our heads, and in every direction, 

 were Herons' nests ; some built in the clusters of ivy, and 

 others on the bare shelves of rocks. The young ones were 

 full-grown (early in June), but still in the nests, standing 

 upright and looking gravely at us. Though I thought it a 

 shame to make any of them orphans, I took the opportunity 

 of killing three fine old male Herons, whose black feathers 

 I coveted much for my salmon flies." Mr. Thompson, in 

 his Natural History of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 146, gives an 

 account of a heronry placed on the ground, in the Island of 

 Islay: — "On the 15th of January, 1849, I visited this 

 heronry, which is not more than three miles from Ardimersy 

 Cottage, where I was staying. It was difficult of discovery, 

 from being amid brushwood and much broken rocky ground 

 of similar character ; and I might have been long hunting 

 for the exact site, had not six or seven Herons, by rising 

 from the heath, guided me to the spot. The locality is at 

 the seaward top of a bank raised by rock, greensward, and 

 heath, and rising somewhat precipitously to the height of 

 perhaps eighty feet above a beautifully secluded little inlet 

 of the sea. The nests are built on the ground, about the 

 roots of large plants of heath, and are formed of pieces of 



