Kate appreciated herons

AN APPRECIATION OF THE HERON

What’s a bird like the heron doing in a place like this? More often than not, when I see one, I find myself asking this. On a darkening autumn evening, jogging laps of the rec, I disturb a heron, waiting hopefully beside a deep puddle left by the day’s rain. As I near the puddle, the heron takes flight; but by my next lap, the bird has returned. This happens several times, and I feel privileged to share a moment with this magnificent bird.

There’s something incongruous about grey herons, especially spotted in urban habitats. I have glimpsed them railwayside on my London commute; spied one ankle-deep in a litter-clogged, suburban stream, and stopped to marvel at one, standing sentry in a townside school field. There is often little glamour in grey herons’ surroundings. Yet look at them! A very large bird, only surpassed in size in the UK by the mute swan, the grey heron (male and female) has striking monochrome plumage that makes up for a lack of bright colour with chest speckles, eye stripes and a quiff-like black crest.

Stillness is arguably the grey heron’s most magical quality; it is the living statue of the bird world, patiently staking out the shallows at dawn and dusk, looking for prey. What other species of bird is so convincingly represented in statue form? As unfussy about its diet as it is about where it

hunts, herons will eat fish, amphibians, rodents, small birds and reptiles, swallowing prey as large as rats and eels. Their only preference is that it should be dead before swallowing, stabbing prey repeatedly with their orange, dagger-like bills. Cannibalism, too, has been recorded, with adult herons poaching newborn heron chicks from other nests to feed to their own older chicks. Magical, yes – but also macabre.

A heronry, where herons come together to nest as early as February, is an unearthly sight to behold, with up to 200 nests in the canopy of a single woodland. These nests have been audited for over 90 years in the UK’s longest-running bird census. Numbers have, for the most part, been rising, thanks to cleaner waterways and milder winters bringing a steady, uninterrupted food supply. In fact, there’s no need to leave the UK at all; herons here are largely resident year-round, their numbers boosted over winter by visiting cousins from the continent.

When you do see a heron in flight, it’s breathtaking. If you’ve ever spotted one on the wing, you’ll know it’s all a bit

Jurassic Park. Firstly, there’s the wingspan – up there with the golden eagle’s at up to two metres wide. Then there’s the lanky silhouette: neck tucked into chest, bill protruding and, most telling of all, jointed legs dangling in the wind. It’s a far cry from the elegant poise of a stationary heron – that statuesque spectacle that’s all too easy to overlook, yet never fails, when spotted, to make my heart skip a beat.