Thursday, July 05, 2007

Heron possibly killed by mink

A mate of mine, Martin Greaves, took his son along the canal bank at Luddenden Foot to see if they could see any activity at the heronry. This was last Tuesday, 3rd July.
The nests all seemed empty, but meeting a man who they guessed was a regular walker, and enquiring about the herons, they were told this.
The stranger had recently seen two herons fly along the canal away from him, towards Brearley. Expecting to see them again, all he saw was an object moving on the canal.
When he got up to it, it was a freshly dead or nearly dead, juvenile heron, being towed across the water by a mink. The assumption was that the mink had just killed the heron.
I wonder if any other mammals e.g. otters, stoats, cats, foxes, prey on them.
(squirrels ?) :-)
Steve.

4 comments:

Alf King said...

A few weeks ago I saw a female mallard and brood being attacked by what I believed to be a ferret around here. This was on the canal some 80 m above Granny Lock.

Matt Bell said...

I do know that an adult heron could certainly take a young mink - maybe it was a revenge killing.

Alf King said...

Given that the animal that I saw threw itself into the water to try to get to the mallards it would most probably have been a mink, rather than my first guess at a ferret.

Are these becoming common in the area now?

Andrew Huyton said...

Mink have been common in the area for around the last 10years. There used to be a mink farm upon the Keighley rd out of Hebden Bridge, then some deluded animal rights activists decided to free them and in doing so killed tens if not hundreds of local birds,mammals etc that are native to the area. For example Moorhen and Coot took a real battering in the immediate area.