VOL. vm.] CORMORANTS IN NORFOLK. 133 



and on lofty trees in Norfolk with the Herons " {Turner 

 on Birds, edited by A. H. Evans, 1903, p. 111). Sir T. 

 Browne in his MS. notes and letters, written between 

 1605 and 1682, printed with notes by T. Southwell in 

 1902, states (p. 11) that Cormorants built at Reedham 

 "upon trees from whence King charles the first was 

 wont to bee supplyed." There is no evidence to show 

 when they ceased to breed at Reedham, but it is stated 

 in Lubbock's Fauna of Norfolk (new edition 1879, p. 174) 

 that Cormorants nested in Herons' nests in the woods 

 of Herringfleet on the shores of Fritton Lake in Suffolk 

 occasionally, but not regularly ; that in 1825 there were 

 many nests, and in 1827 not one. Since that time there 

 is no record of Cormorants having bred in Norfolk or 

 Suffolk. 



I paid my first visit to the birds depicted here on 

 July 7th. 



After prospecting from all points of view and taking 

 trial photographs, it was found impossible to obtain 

 successful results either from the shore or from a boat, 

 so we landed on the island, selected what appeared to 

 be a reasonably strong tree, about 20 ft. away from the 

 Cormorants' nest, and, at dusk, a tall ladder was securely 

 fixed against it. No platform or shelter of any description 

 could be erected, because at that height one was on a level 

 with the topmost branches of the surrounding trees, 

 most of which were too slender to bear any weight, or 

 else too decayed. 



The next day, July 8th, when I first mounted the 

 ladder, one old Cormorant sat quietly on a branch 

 near the nest for some time. I exposed a plate, more 

 or less at random, before the bird flew away. This 

 was the only one exposed during that day, for a large 

 hmb and several smaller twigs had to be removed from 

 an adjacent tree before the nest was clear. In order 

 to do this the ladder had to come down, men and saws 

 hunted up — a process which took about three hours 

 and entailed a lot of labour, for the ladder alone required 



