‘Pie’ in the sky... then reality bites

THE heron hesitated.

A few small fish seemed to have satisfied it, which I was glad to see. A sizeable tub gurnard — the ‘grunting’ gurnard — still lay in the stream that runs through the gravel of our courtyard. The heron regarded it, then turned away to step a few dainty paces to the pond where it lowered its beak into the water and raised it again, drinking.

Meanwhile, out of the green shadows beneath the trees, the magpies swooped, a pair. Before the heron (“Ron”, as he was dubbed by the English girl who fed him his first morsel when he was but a freaky-looking fledgling fallen from his nest) turned, one of them had dunked its head beneath the water, seized the fish, and winged away into the half darkness followed by its mate, their black feathers iridescent as they caught the sun.