HERONRY AT PARHA3I. 223 



after year. At Parham the herons assemble early in 

 February, and then set about repairing their nests; but 

 the trees are never entirely deserted during the winter 

 months, a few birds — probably some of the more back- 

 ward of the preceding season — roosting among their 

 boughs every night. They commence laying early in 

 March ; and from the time the young birds are hatched 

 until late in the summer, the parent herons forage for 

 them day and night. A curious history attaches to this 

 Parham heronry. The ancestral birds were brought, in 

 the reign of James I., from Coitg Castle, in Wales, to 

 Penshurst. They abode in the demesne of the Sidneys 

 for upwards of two hundred years, and then migrated 

 to Michel Grove, in the neighbourhood of Arundel. 

 About twenty-five years ago a couple of trees, for some 

 reason or other, were felled in the heronry ; whereupon 

 the offended or affrighted birds at once commenced their 

 migrations, and in three seasons had all found their way 

 to Parham woods. There is also a heronry — or was — at 

 Cressy Hall, near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. Sometimes 

 they build on the sea-cliff, or on rocks near the coast, out 

 generally in secluded inland groves, among the boughs of 

 the spruce-fir and the pine. 



A remarkable characteristic in the habits of the heron 

 remains to be noticed. When a river has inundated the 

 marshes and plains in its neighbourhood, and the waters 

 have subsided, leaving here and there a few pools with 

 fish in them — the said fish having returned with the roll- 

 ing flood — the heron may be observed to fish in sun and 

 shade indiscriminately. Otherwise, as if the bird were 



