60 
The Birds of Pembrokeshire. 
and other robbers of their nests. Mr. Mortimer Propert, of St. 
David’s, who has repeatedly visited Grasholm, reports them to 
be rapidly increasing in numbers. In the spring of 1886 Mr. 
Propert estimated that there were at least 250 nests on the 
island, in four separate colonies. So remote is Grasholm, 
some seventeen miles from the shore in the centre of St. Bride’s 
Bay, and is both difficult to reach and not easy to get away 
from, that the Gannets might be expected to have at last found 
a place of security. However, a year or two since they were 
the victims of a raid, the particulars of which were made 
public, and excited at the time no little indignation. Since 
then, we believe, they have enjoyed peace. Accident, or stress 
of weather, occasionally drives the Gannet, inhabitant as it is of 
the wide ocean, far inland, and we have heard of a young one 
in the spotted plumage having been picked up by our friend and 
neighbour, the Jate Capt. O. T. Edwardes, of Tyrhos, on such an 
unlikely spot as Tyrhos Common. In November, 1887, Sir 
Hugh Owen reported to us that there were several immature 
Gannets in Goodwick Bay, that were fairly tame, and two of 
them seemed more pleased to be caught than to be turned 
adrift again. They were probably injured by the repeated gales. 
HERON, Ardea cinerea.—A common resident. Although there are 
no large Heronries in the county, there are numerous small 
breeding stations, and the bird is generally distributed and 
fairly common, Our fishponds at Stone Hall were constantly 
visited by Herons that came from Sealyham, where there are a 
few nests in one of the covers. We have counted seven 
together of a summer’s evening by one of our ponds, and we 
never went down to the Cleddy at any day in the year without 
seeing one or two, and after a long-continued drought in the 
summer, the birds would be especially numerous, as they then 
had better opportunities for capturing the eels, small trout, 
&c., that form their prey. Herons suffer severely after a long- 
continued spell of frost, when we have come across them 
perfectly starving. We captured one once, and brought him 
