310 THE SPOONBILL 



Bishop of London's park at Fulham. 1 Lastly, George Owen, in his 

 Description of Pembrokeshire, states that in his time (1603), " Heron- 

 shewes, Shovelers, and Woodquestes" 2 bred on high trees in the county. 

 It is a curious fact that the spoonbills which visit us from the 

 still flourishing colonies in Holland show a distinct tendency to 

 return to the neighbourhood of their old breeding-places. The 

 Norfolk broads, especially in the vicinity of Yarmouth, are annually 

 resorted to, and there seems a possibility that, with due protection, 

 this species might even re-establish itself with us, as the bittern is 

 attempting to do. Fortunately, however, it is possible for us to make 

 the acquaintance of these beautiful birds without the necessity of 

 making an extended journey. Holland must have been a great 

 stronghold of this species in former days. Many of these ancient 

 haunts are now reclaimed and deserted by their bird inhabitants; 

 even the Horster Meer, which was visited by Sclater and Forbes in 

 1877, and by Seebohm and Elwes in 1880, is now unoccupied, but two 

 flourishing colonies still survive, and there seems no reason why they 

 should not long continue to do so. It is interesting to note that one of 

 the earliest descriptions of one of these Dutch colonies comes from the 

 pen of one of our own countrymen, John Ray, who visited the Nether- 

 lands in company with Willughby and two other friends, and pub- 

 lished a description of his visit in 1673. He tells us that in a grove at 

 Sevenhuys, about four leagues from Leyden, great numbers of shags 

 (? cormorants), spoonbills, night herons, and common herons nested in 

 the trees, each species having its own quarter, and that the young 

 were shaken out of the nest by means of a hook fastened to a long 

 pole, and taken for food. A hundred years later, the Dutch naturalist 

 Cornelius Nozeman found another breeding-place in the recesses of 

 the treacherous morass of Isselmeyr, in the Wolle-voppen polder. 

 These birds were breeding on the lower branches of wide-topped, 

 pollarded alders, while a few nested on the bare ground on the 

 accumulations of nests of previous years. Other colonies also existed 



1 Zoologist, 1886, p. 81. * I.e. Herons, spoonbills, and woodpigeons. 



