Friday, 12 October 2007


This is a Grey Heren (Heron in English). I pass him every day on my way to work. A very noble bird, is he, always completely motionless and nonplussed by the zoooming cars and bikes around him. I found out lots of information about my Heren online, especially liked the description of his '...heavy dagger-like bill'. But there's one thing I've observed that hasn't got a mention yet, they love the colour red. My Heren, at least. There are many cars parked along the canals, my Heren will only stand on red cars, and if there are two next to each other, he picks the more modern one. I wonder if the lady Heren's are impressed as I am?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Reiger is the Dutch name for Heren. Marc van Fucht, made the documentary "Schoffies".

Nowhere in the world are the grey herons so cheeky as in the city of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This film is a wildlife documentary that tells the story of the way the grey herons are living in the middle of the city and how they deal with those other creatures namely humans. The documentary shows the relationship between these animals and their sometimes "human lovers", or haters, through one year. Showing the city and their inhabitants in different seasons. The often-humorous solutions the birds find to get the attention and food from the people is cut with the tension from people loving their little ponds where the heron steal the fish. They also have quite a method to walk into bars to get a piece of chicken. The heron tale is a story about two creature's men and bird and how they deal with life in a very crowded city

You can view the movie during the upcoming International Documentary Festival Amsterdam.

See for more information.