264 OUTDOOR LIFE IN ENGLAND 



cranes have not been common in any part of 

 England since the sixteenth or seventeenth cen- 

 tury, and have long since ceased to visit these 

 islands. 



I very much doubt if herons are fit for the 

 table, though we read of their being cooked in 

 the olden days. Birds which feed so exclusively 

 on fish, etc., must necessarily have a strong and 

 unpleasant flavour. I have never had the mis- 

 fortune to be asked to partake of a cooked 

 heron, though I have been fortunate enough to 

 taste a swan, which is justly entitled to be con- 

 sidered a delicacy, whether roasted or made into 

 swan soup ; but even these birds require long 

 and careful preparation and feeding before they 

 are fit for the table. In no place do they under- 

 stand the business of the fattening and cooking 

 of swans better than in that most hospitable of 

 all towns, Norwich. Some fifteen or sixteen 

 years ago there was an old army pensioner who 

 earned his living by fattening and preparing 

 swans for the table. If I remember rightly, the 

 birds were kept in a field close to the Cathe- 

 dral, and the pens were visible from the windows 

 of the officers' quarters in the old Cavalry 

 Barracks. 



The plume feathers of the heron, when dyed, 

 are used in the manufacture of some salmon-flies, 

 and the fibres of the back feathers, dyed and 

 undyed, are useful for forming the bodies of some 

 trout-flies. 



