Sunday, May 3, 2015

Great Blue Heron Community

For my entire life the Great Blue Heron has been one of my favorite birds. Growing up I would try to sneak down to our pond and see what was there and ite a draw between the Great Blues and the wood ducks on which it's hardest to get close to. It doesn't matter where I've traveled it seems the Great Blue Heron can be found and no matter how many I've seen I'm still taken pictures of them. So jump to this year and I've become even more fascinated by this bird. Back in February I was crossing a bridge and happened to look up the stream and saw these things in the trees that looked like large nests but there were a lot of them. Strange I though but figured it wasn't nests because what build nest together like that. Figured it was some weird tree growth or something.
First sighting in February Of course my curiosity was up after the first sighting so on all my wildlife outing I would have make sure to go across this bridge and check out the 'nests' still thinking these are nests. So imagine my shock when in mid March I looked and each of those spots I thought might be nests now had a pair of Great Blue Herons on them. I would have NEVER thought Great Blue Herons as I have rarely seen more than two together at any point in my years of watching these feather friends.
First sighting of the herons on the nests
Well now I'm obsessed! I counted 19 nests but think there might be more. Since then there obviously have been herons everywhere looking for food.

I've seen a few trip to the home improvement store.

I've walked back to the nests twice now but I don't stay long at all because I don't want to disturb them too much. They really freak as they should.

The eggs have hatched and the chicks are moving around but not out of the nest yet. I'm not sure I'll go back there once they get that big as I don't want to scare them plus you can't see all that great with the leaves going in so it will only get worse as summer quickly approaches.


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