SUMMER HOURS ON BREYDON 135 



" There were no high tides during the season. I went round 

 the nests on July 3rd, and found that a great number of the 

 young birds were dying off. I thought that as many as half 

 the hatch were dead or dying. The dead birds had no marks 

 of injury on them, and whether they died from an epidemic 

 or from starvation, 1 I cannot say. There had been no rough 

 weather to prevent the old ones fishing, nor heavy hailstorms, 

 but all that I picked up appeared to have empty crops. 



" An increasing number of visitors went round the nests. 



" C. A. HAMOND, Secretary" 



BREYDON HERONS AT HOME 



Nine miles to the south-west of Great Yarmouth, on the 

 north side of the river Yare, lies the large but scattered 

 village of Reedham, so named, it is supposed, from the great 

 quantities of reeds that formerly characterised the adjacent 

 lowlands ; and made somewhat important by reason of its 

 being a "junction" on the Great Eastern Railway. It was 

 here, too, that Lodbrog, the Dane, is said to have been slain 

 by the jealous Berne, the Saxon king's huntsman. 



To me the greatest interest attaching to Reedham is the 

 fact that a flourishing colony of herons is established there, 

 and, after a long-determined intention, I at length paid a 

 hurried visit to it on the hot, sultry afternoon of July I5th, 

 1905. The heronry may be easily seen from the windows of 

 the train, just as it enters the outskirts of the village, al- 

 though the unsuspecting might pass and repass it many 

 times without a knowledge of its existence. At intervals 

 along the route the lumbering flight of a passing heron may 

 be noticed, or some member of this colony may be seen 

 thigh-deep in a Breydon " run," watching for a lunch of eels ; 

 and now and again another, scarce troubling to look at the 

 snorting engine ahead of us, stolidly eyes the ditch he stands 

 in, hoping for the coming of some vole or stickleback, for he 

 knows the monster to be harmless, as far as he is concerned. 



The Reedham heronry is situated about a mile from the 

 station, in a wooded " carr," on rising ground where the 

 marshes commence, and it is reached by a roundabout road- 



1 Herring-syle, the chief food of the terns, were remarkably scarce in the 

 summer of 1905. A. P. 



