365 Urban Species: #011 Great Blue Heron

[urbpan]

Urban species #011: Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias

While many city people would like to pretend that certain species don't exist--squirrels and blue jays, never mind pigeons and rats--they usually feel quite differently about the great blue heron. A quick Google search turns up a golf course in Atlantic City, an Ontario Casino, a Michigan massage school, a New York City arts center, a Seattle biotech company, a "manufactured home community" in Miami, and countless bed and breakfasts all bearing this bird's name. No one is ashamed to have herons nearby. Of course, a great blue heron is almost as content in a drainage ditch as it is on the shore of a pristine lake. As long as prey is available--which can include dragonfly larvae and other insects, fish, frogs, snakes, crayfish, and even mice and voles--the herons may stop by. They prefer quieter settings to nest, so a breeding great blue heron may fly miles to hunting grounds, commuting, in a sense. Communal rookeries (in New England often in dead forests flooded by beaver dams) can be quite densely populated. North America's largest heron does migrate, but some individuals find city living to be acceptable year-round. Once again, we see the northern city's unfrozen winter water is an attraction for a most attractive urban species.

photographs by cottonmanifesto

Comments

[richmackin.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, that's an amazing set of pix! I didn't know that they were out there, too. There's at least one at Laurelhurst- a nearby park. When my parents visited, I took them there, and made a point to note that I couldn't promise that they'd see the heron...on CUE it flew down to right in front of where we were.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

We have at least 3 other kinds of herons living here - it's my challenge to get photos of all of them!

[suburbangothic.livejournal.com]

I love those herons. They gather in the shallow ditch by the road as summer wears on and eat all the little aquatics while the water lessens, then they move on. Sometimes they're in a pair, one time three hunted together for weeks, then none. I've only seen one hit on the road, such an awful waste. Do you get ibis there? Spoonbills?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

We're too far north for spoonbills. I've never seen an ibis up here, but according to my field guide we get glossy ibis in the summer. Something to look out for, I guess!

[aemiis-zoo.livejournal.com]

I lived in an apartment complex called Heron Walk in Jacksonville, Florida. I never saw one great blue heron on the grounds while I was there though. There were ponds. Maybe I just wasn't out at the right times.

[bunrab.livejournal.com]

Here in Maryland they're everywhere - to the point that when the USPS came out with its egret stamp, our local PO had to put up a sign saying it is an egret, since everyone was asking for the "heron stamp." (Funny how much alike they look considering the heron is a shore bird and the egret is a dry plains bird!)

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Well, to be clear about it, an egret is just a white heron (I suspect the different words developed because egret feathers were used more in the hat trade--the way that the words "weasel" and "ermine" mean the same animal, but "ermine" refers to the white, more useful for fur, phase) . But you're right that cattle egrets, the most widely spread heron/egret, is a land bird. Great blues apparently will feed on mice on land, too, but I've never seen it.

[bunrab.livejournal.com]

My spouse used to have an office overlooking Waller Creek in downtown Austin, and some days out his window he'd see a cattle egret and a great blue heron in the same day.

For some reason, the image of a great blue chasing field mice is making me giggle.