
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 Ireland, 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. 
I 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 
1 R. Bowdler Sharpe: Hand-Book to the Birds of Great Britain (1896), 
III.,-p. 70. 
2 Op. cit., p. 418. 
3 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. 
