Feeding time as heron taps window

LAST week, in Lisbon, I saw and heard farmers demonstrating against the Government in a demand for higher prices for milk and meat, and the survival of smallholders.

They were a hardy-looking crowd, nothing fancy about them, the men in soft hats, the older women in black. They carried flags and banners spelling out their grievances; in intervals between speeches, they beat drums and tambourines. None of them looked affluent or even especially well-fed.

Elegant city folk stepping off Lisbon’s brightly-painted antique trams paused briefly to listen as the Tannoy speakers boomed out across the square as large as 20 football pitches. On the estuary of the river Tagus just beyond, big, white ferry boats plied the choppy waters to Setúbal and Belém. It was a day of mixed sunshine and cloud, and the vast square itself and the sky above it somehow dwarfed the gathering of farmers, with their little coloured pennants flapping in the breeze.

This cityscape was a far-cry from the wilderness of Extremadura in Spain where I had spent the previous days, a there-and- back drive of 1,200km. the rented car, part of the package kindly bought for me by the family, was invaluable. It meant I was able to explore back-roads and stop where I wished when I saw large storks, kites, eagles or vultures wheeling over the seemingly-endless plains.

I mentioned last week that in Monfrague National Park, I had seen a Montagu harrier, a beautiful, lovat-grey bird with a wingspan of over a metre for the second time in my life. In fact, I need not have gone to Spain to see one; a migrant harrier arrived in the Old Head of Kinsale last week and excellent sightings were enjoyed.

I swear I did not carry it home in my oxter or my suitcase — it is far too large, even for the Aer Lingus luggage allowance, which remains generous.

I arrived home from watching Griffon vultures and their chicks in time to see the local ravens fledglings set out into the world. They sat near the nest on the cliff high over the sea and seemed, like our adopted heron, reluctant to take on the task of faring for themselves.

As I write, the said heron is standing outside my downstairs workroom window, knocking its beak on the glass to demand food and seriously disrupting my attempts to write comprehensible prose. My wife isn’t here to kindly take on the duty of feeding it so I have no option but to do so. It is feeding time at the heronry; it eats twice a day and this is afternoon tea.

In the mornings, when we open the bedroom curtains, we see it ‘hunting’ in the stream running across the courtyard but there is nothing to catch.

However, it assumes the drawn-back-neck, poised-to- stab posture of a real hunting heron, and when it steps into the water does so stealthily without a splash or even a ripple. It seems to know how to hunt; now, I wish it would go and do so. I believe it will, before long. It has taken to disappearing from the garden for a few hours each day.

With its beak cast skyward, it stands three feet tall. When my wife is gardening it follows her about. Would it eat worms? Certainly; herons will eat fish, frogs, bugs, mice, rats and even ducklings. I hope it doesn’t get fixated on my wife as did our unfortunate dog (the one that fell off a cliff) and pine for her when she isn’t here. A heron squawking for the return of ‘mother hen’ would drive me demented.

The heron is called Ron, short for he-ron, so dubbed by my son’s girlfriend. I find naming a bird disconcerting and the ‘Ron’ name a bit English for an Irish-born bird. But Stephanie is English and, as the first one to risk the awesome beak snapping at us when it first fell 100 feet from its nest and stood lonely, bedraggled but defiant on the forest floor, I think she has the right to call it whatever she wishes.

On the wild patch across our stream, we find harebells, red campion, ragged robin, three-cornered garlic, bluebells and primroses, all self seeded and a natural, visual delight.