All hail the skills of the grey heron

A Johnny-the-bogs regularly stands sentinel at the end of an old pier, Tanner’s Pier, now reduced to a corridor of wrack-grown rocks opposite what was once the Earl of Shannon’s summer house, now the elegant Courtmacsherry Hotel.

On summer disco nights, powerful strobes from the hotel, roam the skies over the bay like the anti-aircraft beams that searched the night skies over London for German bombers during the Blitz.

The tall bird, more widely known as a grey heron, stands 300 yards away at the pier end, shoulders hunched and silhouetted against the gleaming water. Sometimes, it takes flight, and flaps on its capacious wings to the bottom of the slipway across the street from the Anchor Bar. There, within earshot of the music from the Anchor on Saturday nights, it fishes by street light, the clever bird.