Mobbed

I was out a little earlier than usual this morning, as I wanted to spend an hour or so at one of our local nature reserves, Llyn Coed y Dinas.  I had the hide to myself on arrival, and in my hour there was plenty to see - snipe, gadwall, lapwings;  a little grebe and a common sandpiper - and all the regulars, ducks, geese, swans, coots, cormorants, that frequent this bustling reserve, formed by flooding pits that were the result of nearby road-building a few years ago.

What I was really there for was the chance to see a great white heron (or egret;  I prefer heron) that has been at the reserve for a few weeks now;  in fact at one time there were two.  I'd seen quite a few of these birds while on holiday, and I have seen them before in the UK, but for Welshpool this was a rarity, and worth the effort.  It took a while to emerge from behind the bushes at the far end of the lake (until then I'd had very brief and tantalising glimpses of something white moving behind the leaves - I knew what it was but couldn't really say I'd seen it, as such).  Once out in the open, though, I had some very good views.

It was left to itself while at the far end of the lake, but once it decided to fly up to "my end" so to speak - where the hide is, in other words - it didn't have such an easy time.  There were four or five greay herons also on the reserve, and they were obviously rattled by this interloper.  Again and again it was driven off, and forced back into the air.  The grey herons, or one or two among them at least, were prepared to chase the great white half the length of the lake.

Perhaps that's why the other great white heron decided to move on.  This one certainly seemed to have more "stickability" - but it was interesting to see an example of something a little different getting a reaction, and a hostile one at that, within the natural world.  To be fair, the grey herons do get quite fractious and territorial even among themselves, as they carve out their own hunting patches around the lake (I was fascinated, by the way, to get a good sight through my scope of a grey heron just in front of the hide catching and eating a fish.  The fish was caught and swallowed almost in one movement).  But I couldn't help but be reminded of the way in which in human societies the different person or the minority community so easily becomes seen as a threat and identified as a target, when often in reality there would be room for all to live in peace - it just requires a bit of give and take.