COUNTRY LIFE
WRITING from Montrose, Mr. Ian Grant tells me how he watched a heron chased by a rook or a crow as I did a few months ago. I have thought a good deal about the hostility of other birds towards the heron. Like the tawny owl, he may deserve to be harried. Fraser Darling, in his Island Years, describes how herons would rob the grey lag geese of their young at nesting time on Eilean a Chleirich. Rooks and gulls may have bitter memories of the villainy of the heron, who is as much at home in a treetop as on the estuary. When the tawny owl is foolish enough to venture forth in bright light, a commotion begins among The smaller birds, and, armed with the courage of a mob, they do their best to force him back into the shadows where he belongs. It is likely that the heron has the repu- tation of a murderer or thief among his neighbours. The strange thing is that he seems to do so little to defend himself, but perhaps his balance in flight depends too much on his looped neck and his beak pointing forward like a spear to allow him to drive off his attackers.
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