Birds of a feather

 We had an unusual visitor to our garden yesterday.

Okay, so the photo's not great, sorry. It's from someone's phone, and taken in a hurry. But believe me, it was a heron. It was very interested in our pond, and the newt and frog population might well be smaller today. It stayed there quite a while, and we were beginning to think that it didn't have enough space from which to take off, but it launched itself very quickly when Grace went down the garden to take a closer look.

It got me thinking about herons. Grey herons in particular. We've seen hundreds of them over the years.- maybe thousands, we've not been counting. They can be quite friendly, as is this one that appears to be resident at Berkhamsted Locks on the Grand Union Canal.

Usually, however, they're antisocial. They are waders, but they often stand at the edge of the canal, not in it, alone, hoping to see and spear a fish, and they fly away as soon as a boat approaches too closely. The silly creature hasn't worked out that if he were to fly away in the direction the boat has come from, he (or she) won't be bothered by it again. What he does, though, is to go on ahead of the boat, only to have his fishing disturbed again. And again and again and again. If  instead he wheels away over the trees and into a nearby field, he's on the lookout for small mammals and birds to supplement his fish diet.

Herons nest in big trees, in groups called heronries. These are often habitual sites that are revisited year after year, and may involve dozens of nests, spanning multiple trees. The largest heronry in Britain is currently in Kent, where numbers of nests are between 150 and 200. In this case, birds of a feather most certainly do stick together. They start to nest quite early, and it’s not unusual to see them sitting on eggs in early February, but nesting activity peaks in late March. After the chicks are out of the nest and independent, the male a female adults part company. (There's very little to distinguish between their genders.)

Another waterways bird is the ever-popular kingfisher, but those are far less seen than the heron. I might just blog about these beauties another time.