You can pick out Great Blue Heron nesting habitat as you’re flying by on the interstate. Look for swampy areas, often with lots of dead trees, preferably surrounded by water on all sides. These haunted swamps are where herons build their Dr. Seuss-looking platforms, nesting near the tops of trees. Two notable rookeries, as they’re called, are along Highway 26 west of Fort Atkinson, and along I-94 next to the dump at Johnson Creek. The Great Blue Heron is not one for glitz and glamor.
But the bird’s appearance is nevertheless striking, a bluish gray body, a yellowish orange beak, and a serpentine neck, decorated with white and navy blue. Adding to their majesty, long plumes of feathers arch from their head and neck, flamboyant in the face of a breeze.
Great Blue Heron family at a nest in 2014 (photo by Mick Thompson).
The bird’s voice, on the other hand, takes us back to the swamp. An abrasive croak or squawk has landed a befuddled look on many of our summer interns’ faces, until they finally ask, “was that the heron?” It was; that strange bird. You should not make your way close to a heron rookery, since they’re very sensitive to disturbance, but if you did you might find the forest floor piled high with guano. With a long enough heron occupation, this guano can even kill trees and thus eliminate their former nesting habitat.
Great Blue Herons show off their wisdom on the hunt, in ponds and marshes, where the birds are pillars of patience. Watching a Great Blue Heron is like watching a statue, a study in stillness, until the bird has noticed the patterns of the fish, minnow, or invertebrate it’s stalking. Then it strikes quickly, often effectively, and if it’s speared a fish you get to watch as the heron flips its prey off the end of its beak and puts it right down the hatch.
You can find Great Blue Herons throughout Faville Grove, wherever there’s open water. Watch to see what they pull out of a pond, or listen for their laughable call. Statewide, heron rookeries are spread across Wisconsin, with a concentration of nests on wooded islands in Horicon Marsh. If you observe those otherworldly rookeries, do it from a distance so as not to spook the birds.
Written by Drew Harry, Faville Grove Sanctuary land steward
Cover image: A close-up portrait of a Great Blue Heron profile. The bird has a white head with a navy patch, yellow eye, orange bill, gray neck, and two navy plumes (photo via Pixabay).
