Heron is adept at ‘smelling a rat’ and then swallowing it
THEY SAY there is always a rat within six feet of you, but we haven’t seen one for four years, not since our heron, then a mere ‘child’, paused at a clump of reeds beside our garden pond, stretched its neck, took aim and lifted out a rat by the scruff of the neck and drowned it, before swallowing it on the spot.
Last week, after so long an interval, we saw another. Once again, we were alerted to its presence by the heron. But I can hardly say we saw it; we glimpsed it, and no more.
The evangelists wrote that Jesus walked on the waters of Galilee; this rat ran across the waters of our pond. So terrified was it, that it crossed the two metres to the escape hole without being even half-submerged. It didn’t swim; it sprinted.
The heron had missed it. But I think that rat will not appear on our premises again.
I was eating lunch when it came to my attention. Idly gazing at the-heron-that-haunts-us perched on the balcony rail, preening itself and sometimes exchanging the leg on which it chose to stand, I noticed it suddenly cock its head and become intent upon something in the courtyard below.
I stood and followed its gaze, and then saw it segue off the balcony and, with big wings wide, alight beside a clump of reeds at the pond.
It peered into the reeds. It craned its neck — surely the appropriate verb. Then, focusing, judging distance, it swayed its head side to side, slowly and sinuously as a snake or a Bengali dancer. This is normal hunting behaviour for herons as they prepare to strike.
Now, there was a sudden movement in the reeds: a rat, as I suspected. A sudden flurry, a panicked agitation. And then, before the heron could strike, the rodent launched itself, splayed like a kite in its panic, onto the surface of the pond and sped across it so rapidly that, in that split second, not a hair of it submerged, before it disappeared through the outlet into the stream.
The heron stood back. It may have been disappointed, but shrugging its shiny, black shoulders, it simply fluffed its feathers, drew in its neck and stood with its wings behind its back, like a bobby on duty.
It is in fine breeding colours now, long, black feathers — ‘aigrettes’ —falling from its pole, its beak rose-pink and reddening more by the day.
Could it be losing its touch? It nailed that first rat in June, 2011, when it was still scrawny and aigrette-less, with stubble for a crown.
It simply wasn’t hungry enough, my wife said, and she might be right. Pressure makes diamond, hunger makes hunters. Had it not the luxury of snacks of by-catch that we feed it when it hangs around the yard, it might have been less careless about the bonus of a fat-and-foolish rat.
The rat is unlikely to visit again. It may have died of a heart attack. As I’ve said before, who needs a terrier when one has a heron?
While the biggest of our water birds is not the grey heron, but the swan, the smallest is certainly the kingfisher. In winter, kingfishers often migrate from rivers to the sea, where small mullet come and go with the tide.
From a branch, or a post standing in low water, they scan the sea for prey. Spotting a victim, they swoop and dive, and carry the fingerling back to the post to consume it.
A man in the pub told me that when he was fishing for bass with a pair of tall rods standing upright on the beach, a kingfisher used the tip of one of them as a lookout post and diner. He didn’t disturb it — at least not until he got a bite.
Badgers have nothing whatsoever to do with herons or kingfishers, but I felt sorry for the badger that my cousin saw being chased uphill by six loudly baying beagles.
It lumbered ahead of them, moving surprisingly quickly, but it was obvious it could not outrun the pack.
What would happen if they cornered it? A badger is a formidable animal, with inch-long, razor-sharp claws. As we know, badger-baiting, a cruel, so-called sport that involved chaining a badger and setting dogs upon it, has long since been illegal.
But this badger was not chained, and hounds seizing it might well have come off worst.
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