Threads of mist are still rising off the water as I cycle under an old railway bridge and spot the familiar shape of a grey heron poised at the river’s edge. I haul on the brakes and stop to watch. At my back is the roar of traffic from the double-decker viaduct that lifts the M1 into the sky. To my right are the old Templeborough steelworks, a mile long, where 10,000 people once worked. It’s a museum now.
Across the river to the north is the Blackburn Meadows sewage works, one of the largest in England. There’s willow here, and a generous stand of bulrushes, but no one would call this the country. Tell that to the heron. Framed against wilderness or motorway, it is no less itself.
This heron is clearly a youngster, born last year. Mature adults carry a handsome plume that sweeps back from a black stripe above the eye, a contrast with the dazzling white crown. The head of this one has no plume and is murky grey, emphasising the manic yellow of the heron’s iris and adding scale to an already threatening bill.
Herons have an angular, almost ponderous grace while hunting, levering each long leg slowly in and out of the water as they stalk their prey, peering down. Mine is having none of that. It turns its head with a frown and then does something I’ve never seen a heron do before, plunging under the surface of the water, like a grebe on steroids, its broad arse bobbing up in the air before disappearing completely.
After what seems an age, the heron resurfaces on the far bank among the cover of reeds, and swallows hard. Then it hunkers down, glowering at me like a moody teenager.
I can’t fault its attitude. Centuries ago, herons were considered good eating, especially the young ones, known in those days as “hernsews” or “hearnshaws”. When angling became popular they were persecuted as competition. After industrialisation, the River Don was simply too toxic for fish or herons. Now they’re moving back in with us, taking up ruined spaces we no longer seem to want. I pedal off towards Rotherham and leave the fisher king to its new demesne.
