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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/28/country-diary-the-park-is-busy-with-people-but-the-heron-seems-to-be-in-a-different-reality
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| Country diary: the park is busy with people but the heron seems to be in a different reality | |
| (6 days later) | |
| Old Spear-Face crouches in the rushes. The great grey heron has folded itself, all beak and eye, wing and leg, invisibly for such a large bird, into the watery edge of bulrushes in a park busy with people. Perhaps the people pretend not to notice the heron so the heron believes it really is invisible; they may steal a glance at each other from different realities in the same place but their gazes never meet. | Old Spear-Face crouches in the rushes. The great grey heron has folded itself, all beak and eye, wing and leg, invisibly for such a large bird, into the watery edge of bulrushes in a park busy with people. Perhaps the people pretend not to notice the heron so the heron believes it really is invisible; they may steal a glance at each other from different realities in the same place but their gazes never meet. |
| Old Spear-Face is still, only slightly moving its head to watch the water for an eel or frog, while the surface reflects the finest autumn afternoon, high clouds and rumours of change in the trees. The bird’s eye, with its golden ring, has a determined look, like that of self-conscious cyclists, sellers of socialist papers, wedding photographers, proprietors of food stalls. Its wings cloak its body in plumy tassels of grey, and the scaly stick of its one leg (or so it seems) is jammed into the mud of the New river. | Old Spear-Face is still, only slightly moving its head to watch the water for an eel or frog, while the surface reflects the finest autumn afternoon, high clouds and rumours of change in the trees. The bird’s eye, with its golden ring, has a determined look, like that of self-conscious cyclists, sellers of socialist papers, wedding photographers, proprietors of food stalls. Its wings cloak its body in plumy tassels of grey, and the scaly stick of its one leg (or so it seems) is jammed into the mud of the New river. |
| Built in 1613 to carry fresh water from the Lea river and the springs along its 20-mile journey from Hertfordshire, the New river (technically a canal) runs into Clissold Park, 22 hectares in north London, before disappearing into a culvert. It once supplied water for all of London, most entertainingly for the aquatic theatre at Sadler’s Wells, which was close to its original endpoint. | Built in 1613 to carry fresh water from the Lea river and the springs along its 20-mile journey from Hertfordshire, the New river (technically a canal) runs into Clissold Park, 22 hectares in north London, before disappearing into a culvert. It once supplied water for all of London, most entertainingly for the aquatic theatre at Sadler’s Wells, which was close to its original endpoint. |
| Once a private estate, Clissold Park, with its 18th-century hall, now belongs to the borough of Hackney and people go there to see fallow deer in a paddock, butterflies in a dome, budgies in an aviary and two goats in an enclosure. | Once a private estate, Clissold Park, with its 18th-century hall, now belongs to the borough of Hackney and people go there to see fallow deer in a paddock, butterflies in a dome, budgies in an aviary and two goats in an enclosure. |
| Overhead, wonderfully exotic ring-necked parakeets chime from horse chestnut trees. Conkers drop down to be gobbled up by the goats, which look as though they’ve been rescued from some satanic ritual and are definitely not right. .. | Overhead, wonderfully exotic ring-necked parakeets chime from horse chestnut trees. Conkers drop down to be gobbled up by the goats, which look as though they’ve been rescued from some satanic ritual and are definitely not right. .. |
| Old Spear-face, like a Dickensian standard lamp, looks very slowly this way and that, peering into the aquatic theatre of the New river, being very secretive and not there. And yet, unaccountably, it’s now holding a feather in its beak. | Old Spear-face, like a Dickensian standard lamp, looks very slowly this way and that, peering into the aquatic theatre of the New river, being very secretive and not there. And yet, unaccountably, it’s now holding a feather in its beak. |
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