Niall Hatch

speaker

1,514 appearances 30 recordings 3 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 5d ago

Niall Hatch’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 30 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 10.

Appearances

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Mooney Goes Wild · Mooney Goes Wild - Monday August 31st 2026 · 31 Aug 2026 podcast

It's very distinctive. matched

Very. matched

And when I was looking at it, I was thinking, God, matched

those legs must be a bit of a nuisance.

I'd say the advantages outweigh the disadvantages because it does allow them to... They must.

Yeah, exactly.

That's exactly how natural selection works.

So being able to wade and dash around in flowing streams and in relatively deep water, it allows them access to kinds of prey that other birds can't reach.

And so that's probably why this has persisted.

And weirdly, unlike most other long-legged birds, like many members of the wader family, for example, herons and egrets, which are in the same family, they nest high in treetops, which is really bizarre.

They must be even more ungainly when they're up there.

So it does make them look very awkward when they're flying and when they're clambering about in trees, but it works extremely well when they're out catching fish and tadpoles.

And of course, with the little egrets, they have an extra trick with those feet because their legs are black, but the actual foot itself is bright, bright yellow.

It looks like they're wearing yellow or golden slippers.

And they use those to lure in fish.

What they do is they stand in sort of semi-shaded areas with their black legs in the water, sort of hang their bodies back a bit, and they sort of wriggle their toes up and down, undulating in the water.

And passing fish sometimes mistake these for worms wriggling next to the bank and they come over to get lunch and then they in turn become lunch because all of a sudden that dagger-like beak plunges down from above and gets them.

But it's called the egret shuffle.

The egret

Well, now

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