Wildlife watch Not seen everyday yet instantly recognisable!
is something of the jester in a heron.
Their flappy flights, legs a-dangle, can have a clumsy quality; the jutting neck can give the appearance of some odd, mechanical dance. On a winter’s day, that jazzy beak might nearly be mistaken for the carrot of a snowman’s nose.
Silvery, meditative, but less serious looking than the similarly sized cormorants which often share their waters. Grey herons (Ardea cinerea) are suited to the watery Calder Valley.
I see them studding oaks above Shibden lake, or sweeping through sunset, wings outstretched, an ashy pterodactyl above the roofs and tree-tops. At Barkisland, I watch them, semi-visible in fields of reeds, stationery under driving rain, in fields outside Brearley, on the prowl for voles or shrews, or combing plumages with “grooming claws.”
You can see them fishing in the river, stock-still before the sudden plunge of a lethal beak, and the gobbling and gulping of large, fat fish.
Occasionally, you might see a mother silhouetted against the bough of a tree, craning her neck, dispatching breakfast to her chicks.
Urban herons are not unheard of, though I‘ve never seen one on the streets, and the closest they have come to seeming “tame” was during the first 2020 lockdown.
Emboldened by our absence, herons, like other birds, emerged for longer periods, on canal paths and on the edges of car parks , even residential areas.
I followed one that spring, colonizing the canal side, by the normally busy Wharf Street, Sowerby Bridge, wandering the wharf, an avian investigator prodding around locksand milestones.
It felt, those surreal spring evenings, like the birds were the natural citizens of the towpaths. Gone, for a few quieter, less polluted weeks, the cans and cig butts, fishermen replaced by growing numbers of increasingly confident birds, graceful stewards of an ecosystem thriving without human influence.
The staggered return to “normal” life has seen a gradual withdrawal of herons, back into semi-secrecy. I miss seeing them just a few yards away, eyeing me as if asking what brings me to their territory.
They still appear, though, at further distances along a path, or waiting in water for fish, amphibians or eggs, watching with a hint of distrust as you pass by the canal.
Herons are contradictory birds – elegant predators, yet gangly and grumpy faced; popular, yet a bit mysterious gauche, conspicuous birds, not seen every day, yet instantly recognisable, and familiar as friends.