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

[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.