174
ESSEX HERONRIES.
"here is a Heronry and also a wild-fowl decoy." From enquiries made
I think this is certainly an error; no heronry has existed there of late
years; the decoy has been disused for just over twenty years, and
although it looks like a tempting place for a heron's nest, no birds have
occupied it for breeding purposes. I have seen or heard of solitary
herons' nests at Stony Piece, Lawling Hall, Latchingdon; the
Nursery, Bradwell Glebe; the Old Farm (Dunmow Wick), Burnham;
Mundon Furze (see Essex Nat., i., 142); Steeple; Scots Grove,
opposite Guisnes Court gate, Tollesbury; the Great Wood, Tolles-
hunt Major; Barton Hall Wood, Great Stambridge; and Mr. Alfred
Smee in "My Garden" (p. 530) says "I have seen a nest at
Chigwell, in Essex."
Herons, heronshaws (the name used by Chaucer, Spenser, Shaks-
pere, etc., corrupted by East Anglians into "hances"), moll-herns,
frank-herons or franks (from its harsh fra-a-a-nk cry) are still common
in Essex, especially in the neighbourhood of the coast; one day
last July, while sailing up the estuary of the Blackwater from Brad-
well to Maldon, I counted thirty-four herons as they were seeking
food on the mud, and Mr. W. V. Legge ("Zoologist" 2nd ser. i. 92),
says that he put up twenty-five at once, while out shooting in south-
east Essex; but with the exception of an occasional solitary nest, the
four Essex Heronries mentioned in the last edition of Yarrell's "British
Birds," are, I believe, the only ones that have recently existed in the
county, viz. :—at Wanstead, Boreham, Brightlingsea and Birch. Of
these one is extinct (Brightlingsea), and another (Boreham) is doomed
to disappear within a very few years.
The Boreham Heronry.—On March 16th, 1888, Mr. Reginald W.
Christy and myself paid our first visit to the Boreham Heronry, by
the permission of our High Sheriff, Lieut.-Col. J. L. Tufnell-Tyrell.
This Heronry is not now in its old position ; the birds used to build
where the rooks do now, immediately behind Boreham House; but
about seven years ago this colony became reduced to a single nest,
and the old bird was shot while setting. In 1884 the herons first
nested in West Mead Grove, a small grove planted as an apple
orchard in 1842, and subsequently with oak, spruce firs, and a few
miscellaneous trees, including some Scotch pines. The grove being
only about 400 yards from the river, and about the same level, the
soil is very wet, like all the grass land of the Chelmer valley, and
consequently the apple trees soon cankered and died out, although