Herons at Ruscombe pond facing off

I met Philip B. at his house on Bread Street near Ruscombe this morning to plan the next Stroud Community TV Awards evening, which is one of the events at the Stroud Film Festival coming up in March. It was lovely to see him and his wife, Ingerlin, and we achieved more than I had expected.

The sun was shining and the wind had dropped when I left the house, so I drove up the valley towards the village and got out to look at the views over the steep valley and the combe below Randwick Woods, formed by the ever flowing spring in the combe.

As I looked over the beautiful scene of horses grazing in fields on the sides of the valley, I saw two herons flying up from the bottom of the valley, which has a stream called Ruscombe Brook lined with small trees, and they landed in the uppermost of two ponds formed by small dams. 

I went further up the valley and found a footpath lead straight down to the ponds and then on to the village of Whiteshill set high up on the ridge on the far side. I ventured down the muddy slope taking pictures all the time, mostly of the lovely views in the everchanging light beneath the small scudding clouds.

Eventually I spotted one of the two herons and sat for a while watching it on the bank above the pond. Suddenly the second heron appeared climbing up the bank from the water's edge and they then proceeded to have a dance which seemed to turn into this stand-off. 

They then flew a little way down to the far side of the pond and landed separately and began to hunt. One of them suddenly ran a few yards through the reeds down towards the water and then emerged with a vole in its beak which it then slowly gorged on. It was a bit of a grizzly end so I haven't blipped that, but it was fascinating to watch them hunting and seeming to establish their pecking order.