herons have nearly done me in by means of heart failure on numerous ocassions.
All night conger fishing trips are the worst. Staring at your rod tip for ages then WOOOOOOOSSSSSH a heron zooms by right over on one wing in a major turn.......ARRRGHHHHH WTFWTFWTF!!! Or the heron that decides to do a major divebomb after a mackerel in the midst of a silent dawn......I think the last time that happened I stopped breathing. They are like fuckin ninjas, you only see them when they decide to let you. Best ever but, was just before dawn one morning, not a fookin hungry conger in sight most of the night, but the line started to twitch, so I went and sat near the rod and watched. After about 10 or 15 mins I decided it was a crab or a shoal of dirt harassing the bait, I turned round to look up the pier and there was a fuckin heron standing about 6-10 feet from me, right on the edge of the pier, staring right at me, then down the line, then back at me in a kind of "does this monkey know something I should know" kind of way......but I'd alsmost fallen into the rocks....I mean in our relative poses, he was a lot taller than I was. and he'd just beamed in or something.....no bird that large can pull a silent landing in the hour before dawn, no bloody way. Do like them though. Much nicer than gulls, I really REALLY do not like gulls one little bit.
Post-coital, not post-fellatial. Imagine those ladies firing ping pongs in Bangkok bars, female Dunnocks do the same, but with Jizz.