A HERONRY TO WATCH

I recently learned of a Great Blue Heron nesting colony in Kenmore, Washington, only 10 minutes from my house. But the colony, at the edge of a park and ride lot, was at some distance from the vantage point, so it would take a long telephoto to get good photos of them. So I went up there with my new Canon PowerShot SX50 HS camera with its 50x zoom lens.

The colony has about 50 obvious nests, although not that many pairs were present during my two morning visits. Activity levels were low, consisting mostly of birds flying out to gather additional nesting material. But that activity had birds flying in with twigs and branches often enough to be photogenic, and a few birds even landed in the nearby Douglas-firs to tug on live branches. Otherwise the herons stood quietly at their nests.

The nests are reused for many years, birds sometimes changing nests between years. I don't know what happens when a bird chooses a nest and its previous owner returns soon thereafter! You do see sparring in the colonies.

Males procure the nest material and females remain at the nest to put it in place, and I saw numerous such exchanges. The sexes can't be distinguished, so all one can do is make assumptions that are supported by previous research. The first eggs should be laid in March, according to the literature, so presumably in early April some of the birds had clutches already. Indeed, some birds were flat on the nest, presumably incubating.

Copulation takes place both before and during egg laying, and one such act was observed during a two-hour visit. Both sexes incubate, alternating during the 24-hour period (females more at night), and the total incubation period is about 27 days. Hatching is asynchonous, as incubation begins when the first egg is laid, so the youngest bird may be several days younger than the oldest.

Once the eggs hatch, the young remain in the nest 7-8 weeks, so there will be plenty of photo opportunities to come. One thing I will be looking for is siblicide, where a young bird attacks and actually kills a nestmate. The prey is often dropped into the nest in the midst of the young, and especially when the items are small, the young are more likely to fight over them. When food is limited, it makes evolutionary sense for the brood to be reduced, so the remaining young will have sufficient food to grow and fledge.

Great Blue Herons have had a hard time of it in the Seattle area, as Bald Eagles, which have increased tremendously in recent years, visit their colonies as they are forming and take eggs, young or adults if they can catch them. A few such disturbances will usually cause the adults to desert the colony. They can either move elsewhere or just fail to breed. The next season they try again at another spot, and there is a fair likelihood that eagles will find that spot as well.

I keep hoping that the eagles won't destroy this colony. It has been established for a decade at least, so there is hope. On occasion, herons nest very near an eagle nest, and apparently that keeps other eagles away from the heron colony. I don't know why the resident eagle doesn't take its toll.

Dennis Paulson

BALD EAGLE - HERO OR VILLAIN?

The Bald Eagle is the national symbol of the United States of America. It seems appropriate for a country to have such a majestic bird as a symbol. Long-lived, monogamous, good parent, characteristic of wild places, Bald Eagles excite awe and admiration wherever they fly.

There have been notable dissenters from this view, including Ben Franklin, in a letter to his daughter 20 June 1782: "For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him."

Yes, Bald Eagles are inveterate kleptoparasites, robbing Ospreys and other raptors of their prey. Like all birds, they have terrific vision and are aware of what goes on all around them, even at some distance. Not even a swift and strong Peregrine Falcon can withstand the attack of an eagle determined to wrest a recently captured bird from it.

In the middle of the 20th Century, Bald Eagle populations were decimated by ingesting DDT along with the fish and fish-eating birds that they preyed on. DDT compromises calcium transport, and the eggs laid by the eagles, with inadequate calcium, were thin-shelled enough to crack under the weight of an incubating female. Reproductive success fell and populations declined along with it.

DDT was banned in the US in 1972, and eagle populations have been rebounding ever since, to levels greater than any previously documented. Their numbers have skyrocketed in particular in the Pacific Northwest, which must be optimal eagle country.

Unfortunately, the consequences of this are dire for some other bird species. Eagles are opportunists above all, and they have learned to make a living, at least in spring and summer, by hanging around bird colonies. With present eagle numbers, colonies of Great Blue Herons, Caspian Terns, and Common Murres on and near the coasts have been hit hard by these predators, sometimes just single birds taking advantage of the prey concentration.

The nesting birds have no way to withstand eagle predation, losing eggs, young and even adults to the predators. Even though eagles may eat a small percentage of the birds in a colony, their presence causes nesting to be disrupted to the point of complete colony abandonment. Because of this, numerous Great Blue Heron colonies have failed, and even huge colonies of thousands of murres and terns have been abandoned.

In the coming years, wildlife managers will have to figure out how to deal with this dilemma. Bald Eagles are not on the endangered species list any more, but they are still protected. The birds whose colonies they are destroying are also protected and of concern, and what should we do when one valued species affects another one so severely?

Dennis Paulson

CRANES AND HERONS

Many people call the large, gray, long-necked and long-legged birds we see wading near shore “cranes.” But they are not. They are herons. The Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) is in the heron family (Ardeidae). It feeds by standing or slowly walking on its long legs, sighting prey, and then capturing it with a lightning-fast strike of the bill. The head is brought back and the prey swallowed, usually headfirst.

Prey that is not killed by the strike is manipulated in the bill for a time to dispatch it. Fish that have spines they can erect are thoroughly handled, so they are dead before they make the long journey down the esophagus. In some especially spiny prey species, the herons actually manage to break off the spines before they swallow the fish.

Although usually feeding in the water or at the waterside, the herons’ diet is not confined to fish. They feed on just about anything they can catch in the water, including frogs, salamanders, garter snakes, crayfish, and even large insects. They also spend much time foraging on land, especially in winter when surface fishes tend to go deeper. In the Pacific Northwest, voles are an important part of the diet, and it is commonplace to see the herons hunting in meadows and farmlands.

Foraging by herons is usually solitary, and they are quite territorial at that time, with long, sometimes noisy, chases when one gets too close to another. They also fly by themselves, but at high tides, sometimes several birds roost in the same tree or on the same sand bank, near one another. This heron is an adult, with characteristic black head plumes. Herons fly with their neck folded back. Their wings are very large, about the size of eagles that are many times their weight, and they allow the heron to fly very slowly and land in shallow water with scarcely a splash.

The other bird shown here is a true crane of the family Gruidae, quite unrelated to the herons. This Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis) is only very rarely encountered near Puget Sound, although large numbers migrate through eastern Washington and many birds winter in the southwest corner of the state, especially in the Vancouver to Woodland area, where they can easily be seen in open fields and marshes.

Sandhill Cranes are gray, often tinged with brown, and have red naked skin on top of their head. Their long tertials (innermost flight feathers) hang over their rump and tail, giving them a quite different shape from that of a heron.

Cranes forage by walking slowly through their habitat, often a partially flooded meadow, with head forward. They watch for prey in front of them, which they grab suddenly and then swallow it. Although they eat some of the same things that herons do, for example small mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, they take very few fish and many more insects, as they forage mostly on land. Herons eat no plants, but plants feature prominently in the diet of cranes, especially grains, berries, and the tubers of aquatic plants. As they do for geese and ducks, federal and state wildlife agencies manage refuges for cranes by planting grains.

Unlike the herons, cranes are often seen in flocks, sometimes large ones. They spread out somewhat to feed but return to their flocks to roost and to fly about the countryside. In flight, their wing beats are rapid and their neck is held out straight. A distant flock might be mistaken for a flock of geese, flying in a line or vee formation.

Dennis Paulson