I love the idea of a human walk embodying the fastidious strut of the heron’s dainty stride. 

‘He strode to the wooden shutters with long, slow heron-like paces, and the dust rose behind him.’  

See another heron simile, by the poet Kevin Crossley-Holland, and a simile about a heron, in Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter (highly recommended read – enjoy the bestellar review studded with sparkling quotations and metaphors).

Source: Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan (London: Vintage Books, 1998), p. 14