A video of a heron dispatching an eel in Kent has 875,000 views on YouTube.

In a caption posted online with the video, filmer Mei Joan Guyll wrote: "Just seen this incredible sight of a grey heron killing and eating an eel from our watercourse."

One commenter wrote: "That heron is a beast. The eel is a hard-to-kill creature so it could be alive inside the stomach for quite a bit."

Another wrote: "That beak is a deadly weapon and it knows how to use it."

The incident was captured in the Romney Marsh dyke in November 2018.

Website theromneymarsh.net writes of the wildlife-rich area: "Romney Marsh is an excellent place for seeing and watching birds. The Marshes cover large expanses of countryside criss crossed with dykes, farmland, lakes, coastline, the sea and Dungeness Point, and attract a large variety of birds. The coastline has formed over the past 5,000 years and continues to evolve. Wetlands extend across the area with shingle beaches, saltmarsh, saline lagoons, grazing marsh, gravel pits and intertidal mud and sand flats."

This is a video I captured of a grey heron killing an eel that it caught in the Romney Marsh dyke. It shows how the heron "prepares" it before swallowing it, head first.