136 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



ash, elm, and other trees for the last twenty years. 

 During the last spring (1868) there were only two nests. 



Another, and j)robably one of our oldest heronries, 

 is that noticed by Mr. Southwell in " The Naturalist" 

 for April, 1853 (p. 87), as situated in Wolferton wood,* 

 about six miles from Lynn, and where he was at that 

 time informed " the keepers were destroying the herons 

 as their noise disturbed the game.'^ Most happily such an 

 atrocity was never perpetrated, and as a fitting append- 

 age to the sporting estate of his Royal Highness the 

 Prince of Wales, there is Httle doubt that right royal 

 protection will be extended to this thriving colony, 

 which could boast some twenty nests in the spring of 

 1868. 



To the Rev. T. Fulcher, of Old Buckenham, I am 

 indebted for the laiowledge of an incipient heronry in 

 that parish, which commenced with one or two nests in 

 1864, in a small plantation of spruce firs, near Old 

 Buckenham lodge, belonging to Mr. R. Reeve, who is 

 very anxious to preserve them. Since that time the 

 birds have returned each spring, but the nests have in 

 no year exceeded five. In 1868 the young in four nests 

 were all hatched off, but unfortunately in the preceding 

 winter several of the old birds were shot by individuals 

 more careful of their fish than of the heronry. The above, 

 with a nest or two said to have been discovered in 1867, 

 at Burnham Overy and East Walton, by Mr. Bur- 

 lingham, of Lynn, are the only localities, as far as I can 

 ascertain, in which the heron still breeds in Norfolk: 



* In tlie L'Estrange " Household Accounts," occurs the follow- 

 ing entry with reference to this very wood : — " Itm paid at Lynne 

 when ye went on hawkying to Wolferton wood for fyer and 

 dryncke." It is quite possible, therefore, that even at that time 

 the Wolferton heronry afforded the noblest sport of the day to the 

 squire of Hunstanton. 



