Great Blue Herons

At the bottom of Spenser's Hill - Photo by Clistine Fisher

It was a Great Blue Heron that turned me on to bird watching.

The year was 1979. That summer we drove across Canada in a van pulling a tent trailer with our three kids and Evelyn's three and our big German Short-haired Pointer. The cousins were 15, 15, 13, 13, 11 and 10 and looked like three sets of twins.

After exploring Fort William (the fort), we took a riverboat tour to view the grain elevators at the Lake Head. My nieces and nephew were, after all, the children of grain farmers. As we putted down the river, we spotted a hulking gray-blue bird on the river bank. That was my first look at a Great Blue Heron and I was thrilled. I wished I had a pair of binoculars.

A Great Blue Heron is so large and its movements so exaggerated that one really doesn't need binoculars to watch it stalking frogs in the mud or little fishes in the shallows. It takes slow, deliberate giant steps through the water on its long, spindly yellow legs Sometimes it pauses motionless for so long, it looks like a statue fallen asleep.

Years later when I did have binoculars with me, I had another memorable Great Blue Moment. It was at the Reifel Bird Sanctuary just south of Vancouver on the edge of the ocean. As we walked into the sanctuary, I lifted my binoculars to see beyond a clump of tall reeds to ducks in the shallow inlet. A huge pair of yellow eyes were scowling back at me. I hadn't noticed the heron in the yellow and green reeds not 10 feet away. It stood absolutely motionless, not blinking. Cautiously I lowered my binoculars. No wonder I hadn't noticed it at first. It was admirably camouflaged in the reeds. Its long yellow bill exactly matched the color of the yellow spears. Before we left the sanctuary, I had to buy a souvenir sweat shirt featuring a heron. It's still my favorite sweat shirt.

Because herons are solitary hunters, it's surprising that they are communal nesters, choosing tall trees to establish a heronry. The first one I saw was at the edge of a residential area in the north part of Vernon, BC, in a tall stand of poplars several miles from the nearest water. Before leaves were on the trees, you could view the dozen or so large, messy nests of sticks and twigs. When Norm and Karen lived on Okema Beach at Emma Lake, they were close to a heronry on an island opposite the art camp. Doesn't it seem incredible that such a large bird with such long gangly legs should choose to set up its nursery high in a tree? Actually, I understand that the deluge of excrement out of the nest eventually kills the tree supporting it.

The only person I ever met who hated Great Blue Herons was a Rotarian in Yorkshire, England who was proud of his garden and his pond with colorful (and expensive) koi. The heron thought the pond was a local deli serving his favorite lunch and his frequent raids drove the Rotarian to distraction. He would lay in wait, ready to drive the big bird off before he could land. But the heron was too smart. He would stop on the roof of the solarium and peer in through the glass to see if the gardener was lurking before he would make his raid. The Rotarian tried to protect the pond by stretching a green net over it, but this was a failure because the heron soon learned to rip or stretch it to reach the fish. Last we heard, man and bird were still battling.

This wasn't the first time I witnessed a heron's resourcefulness when it comes to food. I was working for the weekly newspaper in Winfield in the Okanagan. It was a slow news week in January but I noticed dozens of people ice fishing on Wood Lake. Maybe there was a story there. They didn't use fishing huts on Wood Lake. They simply brought folding lawn chairs to sit in with their tackle boxes, thermoses, lunch buckets and other paraphernalia arranged around them. While I was chatting with a fisherman, I was startled to see a Great Blue Heron standing watching from the middle of the lake. It shifted from foot to foot on the cold snow covered lake. Usually herons leave the valley in the winter. Immediately I switched to my telephoto lens to try to capture it on film.

"Don't bother trying to photograph at that distance," one of the fishermen advised. "Just wait and watch."

At that moment, another fisherman had a bite and the instant his rod dipped, the heron half lifted into the air and flew-hopped towards him. Apparently the bird had learned that if he was patient, men would do his hunting for him. If the catch turned out to be too small for the human table, it was tossed to the bird for his dinner.