Abstract
I SEND you a photograph of probably the most extraordinary heron's nest ever discovered in this or any other country. During a gale it was blown from the top of an elm tree in the heronry on Stoke Hall estate in Notts, the seat of Sir Henry Bromley, Bart. It is of unusual size, and almost exclusively composed of wire of varying lengths and thickness; the centre, or “cup,” alone being composed of fine twigs, grasses and feathers. Several other nests of the heronry, which had also been blown down, contained pieces of wire cleverly worked in with twigs in the usual way, but this was the only one entirely composed of that material, as far as the main structure is concerned. There are happily now a very flourishing heronry at Dallam Tower, Westmorland, the seat of Sir Henry Bromley's son, Mr. Maurice Bromley-Wilson, and although I have been familiar with it “off and on” for very many years, and with several other heronries in various parts of the country, I never knew of the birds using wire in the construction of their nests. I have several records of rooks using wire in large quantities in the construction of their nests. Particulars of one very remarkable instance were published in the Yorkshire Weekly Post of May 19, 1894, and of another in the same paper for June 23, 1894. Both of these freaks took place in India: one at Calcutta, the other at Rangoon. The other curious feature of the Stoke Hall phenomenon is that there is, and never has been, any lack of ordinary building material, and that all the wire used must have been carried a great distance.
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MURDOCH, G. An Extraordinary Heron's Nest. Nature 57, 537 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/057537a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/057537a0
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