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 fiat 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, 



