136 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



way, made lively for the pedestrian at this season by the 

 flies, which seem to be awaiting his coming in the tall nettles 

 that front the thickset hedges, and where the meadow-brown 

 butterflies start ahead at his shadow. 



I was fortunate in finding Mr. Preston, the steward, im- 

 mediately on entering the farm premises, and was made 

 noisily welcome (?) by a brace of chained dogs. It was but 

 a short ramble from here to the heronry ; the harsh cries of 

 some of the birds betokening that several of them were as 

 yet at home. Preston, an intelligent and interesting man, 

 who seemed justly proud of the birds, pointed out, as we 



DINNER-TIME. HERONS 



strolled along, a turnip-field most woefully suffering from the 

 "canker" ; on every leaf, or remnant of it, were numbers of 

 small green larvae, 1 with curiously pointed posterior, and 

 which skipped about in a most excited manner on a sheet of 

 paper when touched, in that lateral, wriggling fashion assumed 

 by a chopped worm, but infinitely more quickly. I was after- 

 wards informed that my old friends the starlings went after 

 them by thousands, but the pests were so widely distributed 

 in Norfolk that year that irreparable damage was done the 

 farmers. On the field mentioned a hundred and forty herons 

 have at times assembled. 



1 I forwarded several of them to Mr. H. J. Thouless, of Norwich, with whom 

 they pupated ; he has since informed me they were the larvae of a small moth 

 (Plutella cruciferarum}. It is a very distinctive species. 



