On a wing and a prayer for our old friend Ron

The heron that was regular feature in our garden since we raised it from a lost fledgling to adulthood has been absent for three weeks, presumed dead. Herewith, a brief history, for the new reader.

In 2011, Susan Lovell, a neighbour, came to tell us one Sunday morning that there was a gauche-looking, skeletal-thin bird rushing about on spindly legs in the wood below our house. It was a fledgling heron and, unless it was rescued, it would soon be snatched by a fox or a dog.