ESSEX HERONRIES. 181
solitary pair came and built on a tree on an island in one of my
ponds; then one or two more pairs came and built on another tree—
and two years ago a pair built on a low tree in my little wood closely
adjoining. I believe they are all again building there this year. I
hope so, and I have given particular orders that they are not to be
disturbed or molested; but my rooks behave very badly to them, and
being excessively numerous (we killed over a thousand young ones
last year), they harass them a good deal." On the 10th of May, Mr.
Robert Cross communicated to me the welcome intelligence that this
present year there were five nests at St. Osyth.
Thus under the protective care of Mr. John Bateman and Sir
John H. Johnson we trust the glory of the departed heronry may
speedily return to Tendring Hundred.
The conspicuous appearance of the heron when feeding, its
deliberate, heavy and apparently, though not really, slow flight, with
its long legs outstretched and its long neck drawn in, and its lengthened
high-pitched "craick," are well known to most Essex residents, but
from what I could see and hear the breeding homes of the heron are
not so delightful. As soon as the young are hatched the noise
and smell are quite too much. Landbeck says of a heron colony on
the Danube, "that the ground, grass and low bushes were, at
the time we visited the island, so covered with the excreta of these
birds as to resemble a mass of snow at a distance ; round about the
trees the earth was strewn with broken egg shells, rotten fish, dead
birds, debris of nests and other filth; and the stench in the neigh-
bourhood of this place rendered our stay almost unbearable. . . .
The clamour in these breeding places is so tremendous and singular
in its character as almost to defy description; it must be heard
before a person can form any idea what it is like." (Dr. A. E.
Brehm's "Bird-life," p. 342.) The same characteristics obtain,
though in a lesser degree, in Britain, and whoever visits a heronry for
the first time cannot fail to be struck with the sight, not only of the
heronry itself with its huge platforms of twigs, the incessant snapping
and chuckling of the young, and the hoarse croaking of the old birds,
but perhaps more particularly with that which meets his eyes and
nose under the trees. The excreta and "castings" of the birds are
enormous; the former more resembling that of a cow than a bird,
and the "pellets" or "castings" are like small cricket-balls. The
remains of fish, and ofttimes dead birds, in various stages of putre-