COMMON HERON. 139 



but when the nests are numerous, the stench from this 

 waste food is extremely offensive. Two broods are 

 usually reared in the same year, and, according to the 

 authors above quoted, "a notion is prevalent amongst 

 the country people that the second set of eggs is incu- 

 bated by the young of the first brood."* Young herons, 

 as Mr. Gurney informs me, are excellent eating just 

 before they leave the nest, but afterwards become both 

 poor and fishy. 



That the heron attains occasionally to a great age 

 and yearly visits the same breeding place, has been 

 satisfactorily proved in more than one instance, through 

 birds being taken with a thin copper plate attached to the 

 leg bearing the date of some former capture. In 1844, 

 according to Messrs. Broderick and Salvin,f a heron, 

 on its " passage" to the Didlington heronry, was taken 

 by Mr. Newcome's hawks near Hockwold, bearing a 

 label with the inscription " Colonel Wilson, Didlington, 

 1829," proving that it had been caught in the same 

 neighbourhood fifteen years before ;J and this same bird 



* Mr. F. Frere, on a recent visit to the Fritton heronry, was 

 informed by the keeper that " the birds lay a first clutch of eggs, 

 which take three weeks to hatch ; after about a fortnight they lay 

 as many more, which are hatched off with the young birds in the 

 nest." 



f "Falconry in the British Isles," p. 75, pi. xxiv., fig. 1. 



J A similar instance, showing a far greater age in the bird 

 taken, is thus recorded in the " Annual Register" for the year 

 1767 (p. 107), under date July 7th: "As the Prince Stadtholder 

 [of Holland] was taking the diversion of hawking, he caught a 

 heron with a brass inscription round his legs, setting forth that he 

 was taken and released by the elector of Cologne in the year 1737." 

 In Colonel Hamilton's "Reminiscences of a Sportsman" (vol. ii., 

 p. 218) a grey heron is also stated to have been " shot in the Habra, 

 a subdivision of Oran in Algeria," in 1858, which had attached to 

 one of its legs " a copper ring, bearing the Royal crown of Holland, 

 and, in English, an inscription " Royal Hawking Club, 1850, Loo, 

 Netherlands." 

 T 2 



