Dan's Feathursday Feature: Great Blue Heron

It’s mid-summer. The tiny four-inch warblers and other colorful migrating songbirds have long moved on to their breeding grounds further north. Those that stayed in town are less vocal than they were in spring, more intent on keeping a low profile and raising their broods. It’s time now to address the elephant in the room.

But first, the Cold War.

Many decades ago, when Khrushchev was banging his shoe on his desk at the United Nations, when JFK was ushering in his Camelot, and when air raid sirens and atom bomb drills were a regular part of school life, our family spent summers at my grandfather’s small cottage in Foote Site Village in northern Michigan. Foote Site Village was so named because it sat just downstream on the AuSable River from the Foote Dam. It also sat less than two miles from the end of the runway at Wurtsmith Air Force Base, one of two air bases in Michigan that housed the Strategic Air Command’s B-52 bombers.

“Housed” is probably not the best word to describe those massive beasts’ relationship with terra firma. The SAC mission during the height of US-Soviet tension was to keep B-52s constantly in the air—location unpredictable—and ready to strike at a moment’s notice. They were a key part of what came to be known as the mutual assured destruction strategy of nuclear deterrence.

I was young, and blissfully unaware of the MAD strategy and the weapons of mass destruction carried in the belly of each B-52 bomber, but I was certainly impressed by the belly itself—and every other part of those massive jets. 159 feet long, a wingspan of 185 feet, and weighing as much as 244 tons at take-off, the eight immense engines roared with earsplitting intensity as they sucked in air and blasted out over 130,000 pounds of thrust needed for that huge piece of metal to gain altitude. The sun was obscured, the ground quaked, our windows rattled, even the leaves vibrated from the force as the jets passed barely eight hundred feet directly overhead. Every several hours one was taking off or landing, and we eventually grew accustomed to the periodic intrusion on our peace and quiet, but the awe never diminished.

I am reluctant to compare the Great Blue Heron to such a fearsome weapon of mass destruction, but I think it’s safe to say that if I could poll the residents—whether two-legged, four-legged, finned or slithering—of the local marsh, they would respond unanimously: “We can’t think of a better comparison.” The Great Blue Heron was a beast of mass destruction ante litteram. When one glides into a marsh with its gracefully ponderous flight, looking like a flying reptile from Jurassic Park, every sentient creature hunkers down and hopes that the bird will just keep on flying, and not stop to unleash its destructive fury. If a hungry Great Blue Heron happens upon a female Wood Duck, with her brood of a dozen chicks, mother duck will be fortunate to survive the encounter with even one chick alive. If one visits your koi pond, you’d better hope you erected protective netting, or placed some pipes in the bottom of the pond where the fish can hide. The massive bird will not leave until it has devoured every single fish it can get its beak on.

The Great Blue Heron stirs in me the same mix of conflicting emotions as those evoked by the B-52. I marvel at its size, beauty and power. I cower at the cold-blooded glare that betrays the heart of a predator beneath the striking plumage. I cringe at its voracious appetite and its cruel instinct for the hunt. I thrill at its quickness and agility, and the lightning-quick intensity of its attacks. The bird is a wonder of evolutionary engineering. And I’m glad I’m not a fish.

Or a frog, or a snake, or a small bird, or a muskrat, or a rabbit. Imagine we’re playing 20 Questions, and I am thinking of what a Great Blue Heron will eat. You ask, “Is it an animal?” - Yes. “Is it smaller than a breadbox?” - Yes. End of game. From small minnows and crayfish and snakes, to large fish and muskrats and full-grown rabbits—if it will fit in a breadbox, it’s on the Great Blue Heron’s menu. It is absolutely amazing the variety and the size of creatures that a Great Blue Heron will load into its cavernous fuselage via its long, elastic neck.

A shorter neck would make the swallowing easier, but the hunting more difficult. The Great Blue Heron’s normal way of procuring dinner is to stand stock-still with neck curled back in a tight S and wait for its prey to come within striking distance. Suddenly that long neck propels its beak forward like an arrow from a crossbow, impaling its hapless prey. Then it swallows its meal whole, in one gulp, or many gulps, depending on the size of the prey.

Once the Great Blue Heron’s belly is full, all comparisons between it and the B-52 fall flat. With a meal likely more than half its body weight sitting in its gut, the last thing the heron wants to do is take flight. No blasting engines, no impressive display of power. Instead, it finds a comfortable perch and just sits there, and sits there, sometimes tucking its dagger beak under its wing and napping. Eventually we tire of watching it and turn our eyes to the Red-winged Blackbirds whistling from the poplars. A Marsh Wren gargles from somewhere close, and a pair of Baltimore Orioles flit back and forth from their hanging basket nest, while a female Wood Duck emerges from the cattails on the far side of the pond with six or seven chicks in tow. The Great Blue Heron is forgotten, like a lawn ornament that we’ve seen so many times we no longer even notice it.

My binoculars are trained on the cute ducklings when suddenly a shadow crosses from the left and my view is completely obscured by a pterodactylic spector. I step back in surprise to see that the Great Blue Heron has taken to the air and now glides right through the midst of the small birds I had been watching. Its flight is silent, effortless, graceful, ominous. The small birds scatter like, like… like Piper Cubs that suddenly find themselves in the flight path of a B-52 bomber.

I can’t think of a better comparison.

Dan's Feathursday Feature is a regular contribution to the COS blog featuring the thoughts, insights and photography of Chicago birder, Dan Lory on birds of the Chicago region.