Listen closely next time you’re in downtown Olympia. You might be able to hear a strange sound like quacking, barking, chirping and screeching all at once.
That’s the sound of the great blue heron, a wetland bird native to the Pacific Northwest. The downtown heronry, or nesting colony, is back. Perched high in the trees next to the Fish and Wildlife building and across from Percival Plaza, a small kingdom of nests have formed among the branches.
Great blue herons are easily recognizable by their long beaks and slender necks, but now that hatching season is here, chances are you might be able to spot their chicks too.
“If they haven’t started hatching yet, they will in very short order, but chicks might not be visible to people until they get to be about three weeks old,” said Allison Anholt, the species lead biologist for colonial waterbirds at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Anholt said heron chicks are typically the same size as chicken chicks when they hatch, but they mature to the size of adults before fledging, or leaving the nest. This process can take between 65 to 90 days, but before then, chicks might be spied in their nests.
“They’ll start poking their heads up, usually late afternoon, early evening. There’s a lot of feeding activity, so you’ll start to see little crowns of downy feathers pop up,” said species data management biologist Gretchen Blatz.
And you’ll know when it’s feeding time. Great blue herons are notorious for making a lot of noise. Experts have yet to determine what specific calls might indicate.
“Some we do recognize, things like specific chick calls, which are ones that the parents make to the chicks,” Anholt said. “... But now there are some studies around bird vocalizations that are saying that their language is a lot more complex than that.”
Herons live in colonies, so they are a social species in constant communication with one another. Anholt said scientists are able to record different bird calls and map them on a screen, but researchers haven’t started to examine heron calls in particular.
If you’re hoping to see or hear the herons, sunset is the perfect time to catch them returning to their nests to roost.
“In the morning, they sort of trickle out, and it might be tidally dependent, but in the evening, the sunset will bring them all in,” Blatz said.
Many bird species like to avoid people when selecting their homes, but inhabitants of the downtown heronry seem to have no problem with the hustle of human life.
“You think that humans would keep them away, and humans, the presence of too many people, does keep some birds from nesting in a particular spot, but great blue herons seem to be pretty adaptive to people, or even benefiting from it…” Anholt said.
Because the trees they have nested in are close to water and offer protection from herons’ main predators, the downtown heronry has been able to sustain itself.
“They want an area that’s protected from land predators like raccoons, so that will either be on islands or on manmade islands, or something that has a lot of busy roads and highways they can’t get to,” Anholt said.
Herons are smart about avoiding predators from below, but they are also wary of predators from above.
Anholt added, “They want enough leaf cover or needle cover above to protect from aerial predators like hawks and eagles.”
Heronries tend to remain in one spot for several years in a row unless they face external pressures or disturbance that will prompt them to move. Some herons like to migrate to warmer climates in the wintertime, but primary causes of “colony collapse,” when an entire colony disbands, are when food becomes scarce, predators find easy access to nests, or damage from nesting too long in one spot makes trees unsuitable, Anholt said.
Because the great blue heron are a wetland species, they can help scientists track trends in shoreline health, but not all changes in the heron population directly correlate.
“Sometimes they might be doing poorly in a given year, and that can tell us something about the health of the shoreline, but it doesn’t tell us a lot about the long-term health of the shoreline, because it can just vary a lot,” Anholt said. “... Say, a family of raccoons has really learned about a colony. That’ll cause them to get up and leave and go to another spot, but that doesn’t mean that the health of the shoreline is necessarily bad.”
Long-term studies can provide the most accurate glimpse into how wetland species are holding up along the coast, but Fish and Wildlife have not performed targeted surveys of the heron population recently, which is great news for the great blue heron.
“Great blue herons are actually sort of increasing in number, or at least they’re staying stable. And we have to put a lot of our attention and focus on species that are not doing so well. … So it’s good news that we don’t have exact, robust data for all of our birds. It means that there’s a lot of them out there,” Anholt said.
This has not always been the case. During the early 1900s, it was fashionable for women to wear heron feathers on hats, so the millinery trade contributed to a sharp decline in the heron population.
Anholt said, “A group of women got together and formed the precursor of the Audubon Society. … And then also, the National Wildlife Refuge system was established at first because of the heron population.”
Thanks to decades of conservation efforts and legislation such as the Migratory Birds Treaty Act which prevents the “taking” or hunting of species like heron, heron populations have recovered to a stable level.
Today, the downtown heronry is a great spot to observe and take photos, but Anholt warns, “In general, if you see a bird start to change their behavior, you think, based on you, then you should try to back off.”
Construction
Companies
Construction
Site Security
(916) 672-2660
Contact us
Construction Site Camera
sales@mrsecuritycamera.com
(916) 672-2660
