An odd opening to a letter received. "Dear Y, Herewith a recipe for cooking a heron" and then it goes into the procedure, given in a modern version of one Jeanne Bourin's book on mediaeval cooking for today. Was there a recent reference here to herons? Anyway, glad to say a good word for a bird that comes in for so much criticism from anglers. A heron stands in a pool, says a friend, and as its a salmon-spawning tributary, every peck that it makes in the water may mean the destruction of a tiny creature, not long wriggling around as it emerged into real life from the redd, and which, but for the attention of the heron, might one day come back to its birth-place as a hefty salmon.
That's life for you. But you can't shoot the heron. And you shouldn't. It's a lovely bird, at the same time both gawky and elegant. See the stately lifting and gentle posing of each claw as it advances into a pool. And, while it is awkward in taking to the wing, in flight it can be majestic, even with its long, dangling legs. The slow wing-beats would make it an easy prey for the gunhappy, but you cannot, must not, shoot it. A fax here on the desk headed "National Parks and Wildlife for 1999-2000 hunting season" gives details of game birds and animals and the season at which they may be shot, including, oddly, the curlew for the month of November. It further states that, in addition, landowners and their agents may shoot crows, magpies, rooks, jackdaws and pigeons if they are causing damage to agriculture. It does not state that herons may be shot in any circumstances. And anyway, who would want to eat what must be a scraggy corpse? But above all who would want to destroy a thing of beauty?
The heron is entitled to his bit of fish out of the river, too. And yes, Alexis Soyer, famous cook in London's best circles, around 1850, tells us in his book The Pantropheon, reprinted by Paddington Press in London in 1977, that some modern nations - the French among others - formerly ate the heron, crane, crow, stork, swan, cormorant and bittern; the first three especially were highly esteemed, and Taillevant, cook for Charles VII, teaches how to prepare these meagre, tough birds (Y's italics). The same man quotes another writer as naming the heron as "a royal viand". Don't please think for a second of our lovely heron sizzling on a spit.
The writer of the letter which set this off, ends saying she has no wish to roast a heron, "since I married one. Yours sincerely, Fanny de Burgh Whyte". (She married Steve Heron of this newspaper.) Y