Country diary: the heron’s heroic appetite for survival

f all Britain’s predatory birds, grey herons are some of the most successful. To remain the topic of the other longest-running survey for the species, with detailed records heading back almost a hundred years. In 1928 there were 4,000 pairs in England, when it is in 2015 the figure for everyone Britain was 11,124.

Herons convey more than doubled their population partly as a result of remarkable versatility. Fish are the obvious dietary staple but mammals C rats, voles and moles included C are definitely more than routine, just like snakes, lizards, frogs and birds’ eggs. Adult birds are considered you eat everything from robins and starlings to wood pigeons and mallards. There was correspondence in last January’s edition of Birdwatch describing a heron at Rainham Marshes, in Essex, attacking and killing a part of their own species. Precisely the same letter described them recently killing and looking to devour little grebes and coots.

I’ve seen a very good cross-section of the adaptability but never, until this day, had I witnessed the examples below technique. At Rockland Staithe you will find a couple tall metal posts no less than 2m through the high-tide waterline. A heron is actually a habitual occupant of the tiny village quay, the location where the posts function as a strategic perch to observe for possible titbits from local fishermen.

I noticed he / she heron hop and raise its wings, with knees bent low for the post, that it felt itself threatened. Rather then flying off, however, it angled its dagger-bill for the water beneath the perch and after that, for oarsman might shove off a vessel, it pressed forward and down, striking the water such as a huge kingfisher. There seemed to be a moment gets hotter sat in the surface riding its brief swell. Then this heron, which includes a nice-sized roach within the beak, rose once more. The long hackles at its neck swayed when using the force from the action. Diamond drops cascaded everywhere in the black-fringed cloak of their wings, which now rose and fell like bellows and, with long legs trailing way below, the heron regained its iron post to feed. I timed the whole thing at under 15 seconds.