142 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



to our poulterers' shops, or the older specimens pass 

 into the hands of the birdstuffers. 



It matters not where, or how, the heron presents 

 itself — whether standing motionless in some marsh drain, 

 with the head drawn back for its unerring aim ; whether 

 soaring high over head, with laboured flight, bearing food 

 to its young, or launching itself on the wing from some 

 such quiet nook on the broads, as is so exquisitely 

 depicted in one of Yarrell's vignettes (2nd ed., vol. ii., 

 p. 640) — still, wherever seen, in the open country, or on 

 the lofty fir or ash trees of its adopted home, this species 

 is always a striking object, and one that, from its pictur- 

 esque beauty, we could ill spare from our rural scenery. 

 The voracious appetite^ of this species, however, and its 

 predilection, as a fish-eater, for preserved waters, too 

 often ensures its destruction by the gun or a baited hook, 

 as a well stocked fish pond will be visited again and 

 again by the same bird ; yet in reality the injury it 

 inflicts is much less than is commonly supposed, and 

 it is only in very shallow water that injury at all is done, 

 while the heron, from its feeding on water-rats and 

 water-beetles (two great enemies of young fish) is often 

 a positive benefactor. To the decoyman, as Mr. Lubbock 

 remarks, it is a great nuisance, disturbing the wild fowl 



pece." The following entries in the L'Estrange's "Accounts," also, 

 mark the appreciation in which heron's flesh was then held : — 



It. a hernsewe and xij rabbits of store. 



It. ij hernsewes and xij rabbetts of store. 



Itm a pygge iij hernsewes and xvj rabbetts of store. 



It. a fawne and ij hernsewes and xiiij rabbetts of store. 



It. viij malards, a bustard, and j hernsewe, killed wt ye crosbowe. 



* Bishop Stanley, in his " Familiar History of Birds," states 

 that in the stomach of a heron, picked up dead on the banks of a 

 stream in Scotland, were found " the extraordinary number of 

 thirty-nine fine trout." 



