The Herons
...cont'd from page 2
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| Behold, the baby herons. Photo by Russell Duke.
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a leafless tree. We wondered aloud
why the birds had chosen this particular branch in this particular yard. It
seemed so random.
As the foliage began to come in,
we noticed that one of the birds was
always sitting in the nest, and we suspected that there was incubating going
on up there. After about a month, we
were thrilled to hear the squawking
and screeching of chicks. We had babies! Over the next couple of months,
we saw the batch of three chicks begin to grow, and get pinfeathers, and
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eat ravenously
whenever mom
or dad would fly
up with food. We
borrowed a bird
book and discovered that our fine
feathered friends
were known as
Yellow Crowned
Night Herons.
According to the
book, these birds
were supposed
to be fond of
coastal swamps
and saltwater
marshes. They
were certainly
fond of seafood,
as proven by the
reeking mound
of crawdad shells
underneath the
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| Proud poppa heron. Photo Russel Duke |
nest. I figured that they were doing
their part to keep Waller Creek free
of the little crustaceans. As the chicks
grew, they would venture further and
further away from the nest, first just
cruising up and down the branch that
the nest was on, then hopping and
flapping from branch to branch, until the big day came when they all
flew down and walked around on our
trampoline. It took them almost all
day to work up the strength needed to
fly back up to the nest, but they finally did it, with plenty of coaching from
mom and dad. As the chicks grew
bigger and started to fly around the
yard, we knew that the day was getting closer when they would fly away
for good. And then one summer day
I looked for the herons and they were
gone.
The summer faded into fall and
the leaves came down, leaving the
trees bare. We missed our birds, and
wondered where they were and what
they were doing. It was so cool that
these birds had perched in our tree
and shared their lives with us. We
Continued on page 4
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