The days are finally starting to get longer and the weather isn’t as gloomy anymore. The daffodils are up in the Aigas garden, there is bud on the rowan and the mornings are loud with birdsong. Just last week, there was a reported sighting of an osprey fishing on the Beauly Firth. Ospreys are often amongst the first to arrive, and a sure sign that Spring is approaching.
At Aigas, every year, there is a competition amongst the rangers to be the first to spot an osprey or hear the first chiffchaff or cuckoo. And so, I set out on my day off with hopes of taking home first prize.
Setting off up to the Aigas loch, I had one goal – to see the first osprey. I scoured the tree line, along the water’s edge and out over the moorland above with my Swarovski bins, full of hope. All of a sudden, a shadow entered my field of vision: large wings, headed down the river, I prayed it was an osprey. But when I lifted my gaze, it turned out to be just a grey heron. Just that.
I was a little disappointed, and then I thought to myself: when did I stop appreciating the sight of grey herons? When did “common” become a synonym for “dull”? I’m always reading about the most rare and charismatic species, but how much did I really know about the heron, which I’ve seen hundreds of times?
That evening I opened my laptop: Ardea cinerea; that’s the scientific name. Ardea meaning heron in Latin, and cinerea alluding to its ashy colouration. I browsed something on its ecology, but it was the mythological and historical aspects that reignited my wonder for this species. Such a ubiquitous animal could not have lived with humans for millennia without leaving a mark in our culture, and in fact it didn’t.
Ancient Egyptians worshipped a deity called Bennu, whose name means “he who rises in brilliance”. In the artwork of the New Kingdom, he took the shape of a grey heron, and his call at the beginning of time determined the nature of creation. Bennu was also associated with the concept of rebirth, as he periodically renewed himself, and some scholars believe that it was the cult of Bennu meeting Greek civilisation that gave origin to the phoenix. I read that again. The phoenix originated from a grey heron, from a god that took the shape of a grey heron.
I made a journey through time as I kept searching. Roman augurs, a kind of priest, divined the will of the gods by observing bird flights, including the heron’s. In the Iliad, Athena sent a grey heron to Odysseus as her messenger. The Celts thought of them as embodiments of the supernatural forces of nature. English falconers used them as quarry, or game birds.
I would have never thought that I would find such a deep link between us and grey herons, and the more I dug, the more they seemed to appear everywhere. Humans never stopped appreciating the sight of grey herons; neither will I.
“Common” means that we have a history together. We see these animals all the time and they see us, we share the same habitats, we live side by side. How can I overlook the flight of a grey heron when my ancestors saw a message from their gods in it? I can’t wait to meet another, and from now on I will look at wildlife the way I should have looked at that heron: with a wonder that doesn’t get eroded by time.
