[SBB] Heronry versus Rookery

[Bill Bousman <[[email protected]]>]

Folks,

Ron Wolf has noted that the Black-crowned Night-Herons are back at the Palo 
Alto Duck Pond and that this is the start of a new breeding season (we 
hope).  This will be my annual heronry rant and after that I will leave it 
alone.  Both heronry and rookery are good old English words with a history 
going well back over 400 or 500 years.  Heronry, as one might suspect, 
refers to colonial nesting by herons.  Rooks are lovely, but somewhat 
ungainly, European corvids that nest colonially.  That the word rookery 
should have spread throughout the world wide is not a surprise, as the the 
young Englishmen who went to sea had all seen the rookeries in their 
countryside as they were growing up, and they spread this word over the 
world, particularly for sea mammals, such as seals, and colonial nesting 
birds.  But, a colony of nesting herons is a heronry; it is not a rookery.

Bill Bousman
Santa Clara County records compiler 


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