
HERONRIES IN THE CLYDE FAUNAL AREA. 391 
there are two colonies within the policies. Near the mansion- 
house, high up in Beech trees, all in one place, are a few 
nests? (say about half-a-dozen), and in the other place are 
about twelve nests in Scots Firs. The last-named place has 
been known for at least twelve years, and four years ago 
(1894) there were only about six nests,? which, I hope, means 
a genuine increase. At the north end of the Island of Bute 
Mr. Robert H. Read, on 4th April, 1893, found a breeding- 
place which must have existed for some years, with about a 
dozen nests, but many of them were evidently deserted. ‘The 
nests,” as Mr. Read writes to me,* “were mostly built on the 
tops of thick hawthorn bushes, but there was one (or more) in an 
oak. Although not more than 10 or 12 feet from the ground, 
these nests were most difficult to get at. They were fully a yard 
in diameter. . . . I found one with three eggs and another 
with four.” Mr. Read seems only to have been in time to see 
the last of this colony, for when he visited the place again, 
in April, 1897, it was entirely deserted, and he did not see 
a bird in the neighbourhood.* In 1884 Mr. David M. Scott, of 
Lamlash Lighthouse, stated that Herons were always in the 
locality, ‘(as they breed on the high rocks on the island” > 
(Holy Island); but the present principal keeper, Mr. James 
Edgar, does not think they nest there. In the summer 
he has seen as many as 20 at a time frequenting the high 
rocks on the south-west side of the island, and it is believed 
that the Herons from Brodick Castle bring their young, as 
soon as they can fly, over to Holy Island, as a feeding ground.® 
Regarding the Brodick Heronry, about 1872 there was a 
considerable number of nests,7 and they were placed in high 
Beech trees near the Castle. There is a local superstition 
that the prosperity of the Dukes of Hamilton is connected with 
1 Marquess of Bute, in /it., 25th February, 1899. 
2 Mr, F. W. Saunders, in lit., 3rd March, 1899. 
> 3lst December, 1898. See also R. Bowdler Sharpe’s Handbook to 
the Birds of Great Britain, III., pp. 72-3 (1896). 
4 Proc. Nat. Hist. Soc. Glas., V. (N.S.), 1897, p. 148. 
5 Report on Migration of Birds for 1884, p. 78. 
& Mr. J. Edgar, in lit., 10th April, 1899. 
7 Bryce’s Geology of Arran, &c. (4th ed., 1872), p. 304. 
