100 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
among the aquatic grasses and sedges on a marshy 
islet in the stream. 
A large heronry is to the naturalist one of the 
most fascinating spectacles in the wild bird life of 
this country. Heaven be thanked that all our 
landowners are not like those of South Devon, 
who are anxious to extirpate the heron in that 
district in the interest of the angler. On account 
of their action one is inclined to look on the whole 
fraternity of dry-fly fishers as a detestable lot of 
Philistines. Some years ago they raised a howl 
about the swallows—their worst enemies, that 
devoured all the mayflies, so that the trout were 
starved! Well, they can rejoice now to know that 
swallow and martin return to England in ever- 
decreasing numbers each summer, and they must 
be grateful to our neighbours across the Channel 
who are exterminating these noxious birds on 
migration. 
I have known and know many heronries all 
over England, and I think the one I liked to visit 
best of all was in a small wood in a flat green 
country in the Norfolk Broads district. It was 
large, containing about seventy inhabited nests— 
huge nests, many of them, and near together, so 
that it looked like a rookery made by giant rooks. 
And it has had a troubled history, like that of an 
old Norfolk town in the far past when Saxons and 
Danes were at variance. For this heronry had been 
established alongside of an old populous rookery, 
