Now here’s a thing.  Going through my photos from Marievale, I came across a nice sequence of images of a squacco heron marching through the reeds. You can almost hear the martial music – tum ti tum ti tum ti DUM – as it crashes onwards and finally, clumsily, launches into the air.

I was going to say something also, tongue in cheek, about the perils of anthropomorphism, and how, Once Upon A Time As A Young Man, I would have scowled and protested at this characterisation. Animals are animals, I would have stated, with self-possession and authority. Don’t confuse them with humans.

One grows gentler, perhaps as one grows older, a little more tolerant. And I am able to laugh now at that righteous young fellow, and enjoy, without guilt, that marching band accompanying the heron. The point is, I do know better. And it doesn’t matter.

But then I came to this image, the last of this particular sequence, and realised it was in a different league altogether. Out of the window went the photo-story, the sequence of images going tum-ti tum-ti-tum through the reeds, and instead here is simply the one particular image I want to present to you. The chosen one.