Heron Issues Statement Regarding the Six Hours

A grey heron at the west end of the mill pond has issued a statement responding to what it calls persistent mischaracterisation by walkers, joggers and at least one organised birdwatching group, following six hours of continuous standing on Tuesday. The bird stood in roughly eleven centimetres of water from dawn until early afternoon, and wishes to make clear that this was, at all times, work. The statement was delivered, like everything else the heron does, from exactly the same spot.

“At no point was I doing nothing,” the heron said. “Herons hunt by waiting. The fish arrives on the fish’s schedule, not on yours, and the gap between those two schedules is not idleness. It is the job.” The bird confirmed that it had shifted position twice during the morning, and that both shifts were deliberate. It declined to say what the second shift had been for, citing operational reasons, but hinted that it involved a reed and a very small ripple.

One jogger, who passed the pond four times, reported no detectable change in the heron’s position on any lap, and described the effect as unsettling. A walker with a thermos said the bird looked as though it had been painted onto the morning. The heron responded that the jogger had covered a considerable distance over the same period and had also not caught a fish, and that the walker had been standing still with a thermos for twenty minutes, which is how it always starts.

Asked how many fish the six hours had produced, the heron declined to give a figure. Observers put it at one, taken at twenty to three in an operation lasting slightly under four seconds. The six hours, the bird added, were for that. It then resumed standing, and was still standing there at dusk, a grey shape against an orange sky, apparently at work on the next four seconds and entirely unconcerned by anyone’s opinion of the method.

The comedy is built on something anyone who walks by water may have seen. Herons really do spend long spells standing almost perfectly still in the shallows, and then strike with a sudden, lightning-quick jab of the beak. To a passer-by the waiting looks like doing nothing at all, but for the heron the stillness is the whole technique: a motionless bird is much harder for a fish to notice than one that keeps moving about.

It is a useful thing to remember on a busy day. Plenty of worthwhile work looks, from the outside, exactly like standing still: thinking a problem through, waiting for bread to rise, letting a garden grow. The heron would not call it patience, just good sense. So if someone ever suggests you are doing nothing while you wait for the right moment, you have a very dignified bird on your side, and possibly a fish, eventually.