The Grey Sentinel of the River
There is something compulsively attractive about leaning over the parapet
of a bridge watching the water tumbling below. Young boys do it; old men do it. Given half
a chance, I could spend whole days doing it. Whether a broad lowland river or a wee
highland burn, there is always something of interest to be seen.
One of my favourite bridges is on the road between Kinross and Kinnesswood. It spans the
North Queich only a few hundred yards from its mouth in Loch Leven and I was perched on
the ancient stonework looking downstream when I saw him. A grey shadow, barely visible in
the fading evening light.
When, a few minutes later, the bird took to the wing and flapped lazily up-river, there
was no mistaking the silhouette. A heron in flight looks like no other creature alive.
There was a touch of irony in the heron's presence on that particular stream. The fishing
season was drawing to a close and the trout congregating at the mouth of the Queich, in
preparation for their spawning journey upstream, must have been thinking that they were
safe for another year.
With a heron to pass, however, they faced a much more efficient fisherman than the anglers
on the loch. In any fishing competition, the grey bird would come tops every time!
Before they were fully protected by law, herons were widely persecuted by fishery owners
who imagined that they did great damage to fish stocks. In reality, the reputation was not
deserved. In comparison with other predators like mergansers and cormorants, the heron
makes very little impact upon trout and salmon numbers. Given a choice, it would plump for
a nice juicy eel every time.
In any case, outwith the breeding season, it is rare to see more than two or three herons
together and that solitary bird on the North Queich would not take more than the odd trout
from the thousands which pass up every day at this time of year.
A couple of days after that sighting I again had to drive through to Fife and stopped at
the bridge to see if the heron was still in the area. Sure enough, in almost exactly the
same spot, he stood in the water gazing intently at the river bed.
For almost half an hour a watched him. In that time he moved not an inch but stood, erect
and still, in a way which would have done credit to a sentry at Holyrood Palace.
I was dying to see him spear a fish but, on that occasion, had to leave before he had
caught his mid-day meal.
Like a number of other fish-eating birds, the heron has no crop and his food slides
straight down the long neck into the stomach where it is quickly digested. Once, at the
mouth of the River Eden near Guardbridge, I watched a heron catch and eat a fair-sized
flounder. The bird's neck was forced out into a fan shape which rippled downwards as the
flook was ingested.
Although the overall impression is of a nondescript grey plumage, the heron is really
quite an attractive bird when seen at close quarters. Black stripes run down the neck from
the crest to the shoulders and there are long feathery plumes on the bird's back.
When in flight, the normally elegant neck is drawn up like a grotesque double chin and
sometimes the legs dangle behind in a most ungainly fashion. Despite this, the heron is a
strong flier and can cover fair distances with surprising speed.
In springtime, herons tend to congregate in communal nesting sites where the nests are
built high in the branches of tall trees. The same heronries are used year after year,
with a few sticks being added to repair any old nests which are wearing a bit thin.
It is when herons are together like this that they can be studied more closely and many
folk have been surprised to find that their diet contains frogs, voles, lizards, beetles
and even ducklings as well as fish.
The grey sentinel of the river certainly enjoys varied fare.