THE HERON. . 147 



rising from the heath, guided me to the spot. The locality is at the 

 sea-ward top of a bank varied by rock, greensward, and heath, and 

 rising somewhat precipitously to the height of perhaps eighty feet above 

 a beautifully secluded little inlet of the sea. The nests are built on 

 the ground about the roots of large plants of heath, and are formed 

 of pieces of light stick. Three of them are about two and a-half yards 

 distant from each other. They are all perfectly accessible to any 

 person walking over the ground ; but fortunately the birds are not 

 disturbed when breeding. There is a profusion of low natural wood, 

 chiefly birch and hazel, quite contiguous ; the birch twelve to fifteen 

 feet high, and some alder trees of twenty feet are near at hand. A 

 quarter of a mile distant is a hill side covered with indigenous trees of 

 larger size ; twenty to twenty-five feet in height. Yet this is the heron's 

 only breeding place on the eastern quarter of the island. The birds 

 are said to frequent the site on stormy days throughout the year, flying 

 to it when the wind blows strong upon the neighbouring shore.* 



I was told of a siurilar heronry in the grounds at Islay House, and 

 went to see it ; but found instead, that the nests were all in trees ; 

 larch, ash, &c. about twenty feet high; the nests themselves being 

 from twelve to fourteen feet above the ground. There are perhaps a 

 dozen of them. This heronry adjoins a small rookery, the inhabitants 

 of which are often seen to attack and drive them off, the herons flying 

 before them without resistance. The proximity of the breeding places 

 of the two species is singular in this instance, as there is a great extent 

 of continuous plantation precisely similar as to species and size of 

 trees, as well as other features. The rooks are said to have commenced 

 building there before the herons. This and the heronry already noticed 

 are stated to be the only two breeding places of the species in Islay. 



Although it certainly is not friendship for each other that brings the 

 two species together, yet in the summers of 1847 and 1848, at 

 Coolmore near Cork, two pair of rooks and a pair of herons built 



* Since the preceding was written, Mr. St. John has published the following 

 note : — " I was told of a singular heronry situated on a lake between the Oykel and 

 the inn at Altnagaleanach, where the herons breed in great numbers on the ground 

 in au island on the loch." — Tour in Sulherlandshire, vol. i. p. 15 (1849.) 

 Though the heron is common everywhere in Sutherlandshire, this is the only heronry 

 of which the author had heard, (p. 138.) Mr. St. John, in his former work — ' Wild 

 Sports of the Highlands,' describes a heronry on the high cliffs near Cromarty, 

 where some of the nests are " built in the clusters of ivy, and others on the bare 

 shelves of rocks," p. 123. 



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