Grey herons are the largest birds most of us ever see in our garden: the wing span is around 6ft.
Despite their size, they are surprisingly light, weighing on average only half as much as a greylag goose.
The old English name for a heron was hragra; other names now largely fallen into disuse include harn, hernser and hernshaw. Heron comes from the French, for the French name is héron céndre.
In medieval times the heron was a favourite quarry of falconers who valued its great flying skills and ability to evade the falcon's stoops.
Roast herons were also popular at medieval banquets: the young birds, called branchers, were thought to be the best to eat.
The fat of a heron killed at full moon was once believed to be a cure for rheumatism.
Herons are sociable birds when nesting, invariably nesting in long-established heronries.
Most heronries are in trees, with the majority of nests at least 25m above the ground. However, reed-bed heronries are not unusual, and they will also nest on cliffs, bushes, sometimes even on buildings of bridges.
Heronries can reach a prodigious size: one at Great Snowden's Wood, near Brede in Sussex, contained around 400 nests in 1866.
The biggest heronry in Britain is currently at Northward Hill in Kent, an RSPB reserve. Numbers here have peaked at over 200 nests, but the current total is around 150.
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