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Updated: June 3, 2025
To gain the full sport of hawking a heron must not be put up from its feeding-ground, where it is heavy with its meal, and has no time to get its pace on before it is pounced upon by the more active hawk, but it must be aloft, traveling from point to point, probably from the fish-stream to the heronry. Thus to catch the bird on passage was the prelude of all good sport.
In Guernsey itself, however, it is more likely that a few Herons formerly bred, and that there was once a small Heronry in the Vale. As Mr. MacCulloch writes to me, "There is a locality in the parish of St. Samson, at the foot of Delancy Hill, in the vicinity of the marshes near the Ivy Castle, formerly thickly wooded with old elms, which bears the name of La Heronière.
The ten thousand pounds will be yours for certain: for, as we all know, cousin Marvel, you are a genius! But why a genius should set his fancy upon a heronry, of all things in this mortal world, is more than I can pretend to tell, being no genius myself."
The history of his insolence about the heronry was now related by Marvel; and the stranger seemed to sympathize so much in his feelings, that, from a stranger, he began to consider him as a friend.
He looked down upon the whole race of farmers and traders as beings of a different species from himself; and the indignation with which he heard, from a Lincolnshire farmer, a proposal to purchase his heronry, may perhaps be imagined, but cannot be described.
Visitors should make their way to the lake where the scene, with the Downs as a background, is one of extreme beauty. The Heronry here is famous; the birds were originally brought from Wales to Penshurst, from which locality they migrated to Angmering and then to Parham. Lady Dorothy Nevill, in her interesting "Leaves," refers to Parham as a favourite resort of smugglers.
After riding for a couple of miles along a road which led them over beautifully undulating ground, affording glimpses of every variety of forest scenery sometimes plunging them into the depths of groves, where the path was covered by over-arching trees sometimes crossing the open chace, studded by single aged oaks of the largest size sometimes, skirting the margin of a pool, fringed with flags, reeds, and bulrushes for the protection of the water-fowl now passing the large heronry, to the strict preservation of which James attached the utmost importance; they at length approached the long avenue leading to the palace.
But on the way to the marsh the knight and the Prior paid little attention to the diversion of falconry. They were deep in consideration of the best way to drain the swamp and deal with it generally. Eleanor's heart beat fast as they neared the heronry. It was not a heron, however, which claimed the maiden flight of Mabonde. It was a woodcock flushed in the edge of a copse.
For a while the frog's symphony dominated all other sounds, then lagoon and forest and cypress branch awoke; and through the steadily sustained tumult of woodland voices I could hear the dry bark of the fox-squirrel, the whistle of the raccoon, ducks softly quacking or whimpering as they prepared for sleep among the reeds, the soft booming of bitterns, the clattering gossip of the heronry, the Southern whippoorwill's incessant call.
During the nesting season, which covers the months of April, May and June, I am through this heronry in a small canoe almost every day, and often twice a day. I have had these herons under my close inspection for the past 17 years, and I have not in any one season picked up or seen more than half a dozen discarded plumes.
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