Subject: Herons gone from Black River Slough
Date: Apr 10 08:50:09 1999
From: Gaylord Mink - gmink at bentonrea.com


Carol Schulz reported the mysterious disappearance
of heron from the rookery at Black River slough.
I have been following activities at a rookery in
Yakima county over the past 2-3 weeks that may
provide some insight.
Last week and the preceding week there were many
heron coming and going at the rookery; standing in
the nests, sounding off, and otherwise making
their presence known. The last few days, however,
the rookery is strangely quiet of heron. If you
look carefully you can see individuals sitting
quietly hunched down in a few of the nests ( about
6 of some 35 nests yesterday); sometimes with only
their bill protruding above the edge. Because the
trees are 40-50 high it is difficult see into the
nests. Occasionally one will stand briefly to
stretch and sometimes one mate will relieve the
other but exchanges seem to happen either early
morning or very late afternoon.
By contrast, cormorants nesting in these same
trees are quite noisy and highly visible at the
moment with their mating rituals. Yesterday there
were as many as 16-20 cormorants in a single tree.

In an adjacent tree the six or so nesting heron
seem patiently above it all.

Gaylord Mink
Prosser, Wa