136 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
ash, elm, and other trees for the last twenty years. 
During the last spring (1868) there were only two nests. 
Another, and probably 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 little 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 knowledge 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 the 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. 
