The Cranky Old Geezer has posted a few better pictures he took so you can see more clearly.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Great Blue Heron Rookery
The COG and I went for a drive to find a Great Blue Heron Rookery he had heard about. A rookery is like a nursery, where chicks are raised. It turned out to be a short walk through the woods, then a primeval looking place -a huge marsh, with lots of dead pine trees in the middle. The pine trees were like apartment buildings with nests stacked over nests and teeming with herons. It's not a great picture, but the nests are fairly obvious - they are the darker, thicker bits you see going up the tree trunks. We stayed for quite a while - it was so amazing to see so many herons at once. Usually you see one which flies off the moment you see it, but here there were a hundred or more. Often 3 or 4 to a nest, the young ones already very large and nearly fully fledged. Soon the rookery will be deserted and they will all return to their solitary ways.
The Cranky Old Geezer has posted a few better pictures he took so you can see more clearly.
The Cranky Old Geezer has posted a few better pictures he took so you can see more clearly.
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A tornado touchdown in late May took out the rookery on an island in the middle of the Mississippi in North Minneapolis -- the reports predicted 500-1000 Great Herons and chicks were scattered (and killed). Two people died in that same storm (this was the same weather front that caused the destruction of Joplin Missouri, so those two didn't get much publicity) -- I'm sorry about them, but it's the deaths of all those herons, and the destruction of a nesting area, that hits me hardest.
Luckily Nephew of - R - has found a rookery near the Island.
(This is the first time I've read blogs since late May. I've missed much. You live quite a Martha Stewart life, with your hand-shucked oysters and homemade pizza!)
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