Re: [SBB] Heronry versus Rookery

[Nancy Teater <[[email protected]]>]

And what is a colony of egrets and herons, as at Audubon Canyon Ranch? A 
colony?
Nancy


At 07:34 PM 2/7/2006 -0800, Bill Bousman wrote:
>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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--
Nancy R. Teater, Hamilton Communications
[[email protected]]
phone 650.321.0252  fax 650.491.3878


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