Last week I was in the kitchen doing my usual morning rush of getting breakfasts and lunches ready for the kids to go off to school. I looked up and thought something was going to fall through our kitchen window. There was a huge movement and quickly I realized that at our little bird feeder in the yard (the same one that Paddington Bear sometimes comes by and night feeds on) there was a heron standing and staring through the window at us.

Being cool and calm like I am I freaked out and yelled – “OMG, it’s my heron. Look! Kids! Quick! Get the camera.” And while showing off my coolness I completely freaked out the heron who turned and ran and instead of being able to take off and get away from us ended up running right into our fence. Which of course caused much more excitement both inside and outside the house. We were pretty much mirror images of each other – one freaking out outside and the other from inside.

Poor guy finally got off and in the air. He flew quite a long ways away before doing one more fly by to kind of “give me the bird” and then he was gone.

We do have our little pond in the back yard, but he wasn’t really near it at all and actually was on the other side of the fence from it. I was wondering if there was any meaning to this sudden showing up of my friend-bird whom I had not seen since before Christmas – so I did a little searching online.

Here’s what I found according to  www.spirit-animals.com:

If Heron has come wading across your path;

It is time to look deeper into aspects of your life that will bring out innate wisdom and show you how to become self-reliant. Are you grounding yourself regularly? Heron teaches that grounding yourself in the earth and your spiritual beliefs will help you discover emotional insights more clearly and more quickly.

Alternatively he could be teaching you how how to become comfortable in uncertain situations and to be watchful of opportunities to arise so that you can quickly grasp them and move on.

~~~

Now, it’s interesting because I have been working really hard on grounding myself. I felt more grounded being home over Christmas than I’ve felt in ages (like since the last time we were home) and I’ve been making a really conscious effort to work on staying grounded and centered.

The second half of the information really gave me a chuckle however: “Alternatively he could be teaching you how how to become comfortable in uncertain situations and to be watchful of opportunities to arise so that you can quickly grasp them and move on.”

“Comfortable in uncertain situations”. I would have to say that both the heron and I were not comfortable in our uncertain situation of coming face to face. Neither of us was particularily elegant or graceful. Given the option of fight or flight we both seemed quite comfortable with flight (or freak out and trip and fall all over yourself while trying to make an escape).

Either way, I felt quite honoured and happy that my heron friend had made his way to our place to say hello. It was kinda cool.