WILDLIFE likes to stay out of our way, to hide – even if sometimes it’s in plain sight. Animals and birds have disguises and camouflage, they skulk and keep to the shadows.
The fewer people or other dangerous predators that see them, the longer they’ll live. And as this amazing photograph shows, they even manage to hide under our roads.
This heron was pictured by reader Frank Carney last week near Twinbrook Leisure Centre.
Frank was out walking his dog when he noticed the enormous bird sitting in a wee tunnel under the road. A tiny stream – probably one of hundreds of tributaries to Colin River – runs under the main road here, but it looks too small to sustain the sort of fish that herons feed on.
But if the heron is here, then there’s life in that stream – even if it’s just frogs rather than their favourite trout and salmon, which they skewer with that dagger-like beak.
It’s another example of how nature often manages to live close to us without us even knowing it.
Because they’re such a big bird, the heron population can be estimated to the last bird. They nest in heronries – gathering in groups to build massive nests in the treetops. There are 700 individual nests in the north – the only one Dúlra knows of locally is in the tall trees in the grounds of Dominican College off Fortwilliam Road – and 3,500 in total in Ireland.
In Britain, they managed to count every single nest in 2023 – all 9,417 of them, down from 13,000 20 years ago.
However, milder winters have been good for the heron and their population has grown in Ireland, even if it has taken a dip recently.
It’s pretty appropriate that a reader spotted this skulking bird just as the snow storm was about to hit – because in Irish folklore, the heron is an omen of bad weather.
Known as the corr réisc (the crane of the bog) or, as Dúlra has heard it called in Donegal, the corr mhóna (crane of the turf), it was said that the heron screeched before an impending storm and flew up to 40 miles inland.
Twinbrook isn’t quite 40 miles from the coast, but this bird found the perfect escape from the snowstorm that hit Belfast days later – the heron is not only under the road, but it has a big old tree for cover as well.
Frank said: “The stream was only about nine inches deep and I’m not sure if there are small fish in it. Maybe the heron was sheltering from the bad weather – birds and animals are smarter than humans!”
He’s got a point – to survive winter, they'll all have to be as cunning as the Twinbrook heron.
If ever there was a time when birds need our help, this is it. With snow and frost on the ground, they can’t dig into it with the beaks for insects. Dúlra is religious about feeding the garden birds every day – and several times a day when the weather is so bad.
And one of the best items to offer them – as well as bread of course – is the humble apple.
Birds flood into Ireland from Europe in the hope of finding warmer weather and blackbirds in particular will devour apples.
It’s hard to find cheap ones – but Dúlra has managed to get four for £1 in one supermarket.
And when spring finally arrives and those blackbirds return to their native land, a family in Copenhagen or Stockholm will have Dúlra and those apples to thank when a pair of blackbirds nests once more in the hedge in their back garden.
* If you’ve seen or photographed anything interesting, or have any nature questions, you can text Dúlra on 07801 414804.
