Folks who live in the country soon learn that the wildlife in their area provides both agony and ecstasy. Seeing a mother deer and her fawn grazing in a meadow is thrilling, but seeing the damage done by a deer grazing on your shrubs is definitely an agony. I feel extremely lucky to not have deer problems, but my war with other wildlife seems to be getting more frustrating every year.
Who would complain at the sight of a great blue heron gliding across the pond to land with ultimate grace at the water's edge. Not I. In fact I always yelled at the dogs whenever I caught them scaring that beautiful bird away. Back in 2006 I wrote a column about the heron (look in the Archives under Wildlife for "Pond Visitors" ) who did a prat-fall when his long legs went right out from under him as he stepped onto the pond's slippery slanted rubber bottom. I was never lucky enough to watch this hilarious scene repeated, but I always loved seeing a heron come to visit.
At least until this past summer. In August I began seeing a heron by the pond almost daily, so frequently that the dogs got bored with the chase. This gloomy gray creature, whom I named Gertie, my least favorite name, looked half-starved as she crouched like a cement statue at the water's edge for what seemed like hours at a time. Since my single goldfish is close to two feet long and my amurs are equally large, I was pretty sure Gertie was too feeble to harm any of them.
It never occured to me that she might find frogs an appetizing meal, but one day when my friend Rona saw Gertrude arrive at the pond, she warned me that the bird might decimate the frog population. I still wasn't very concerned since we've always had dozens of frogs and tadpoles inhabiting the pond (see "56 Frogs" in the Archives), but the next day I counted only three frogs as I walked around the pond's edge and not a sign of the tizzy of tadpoles that normally squiggles away from the bank as I pass.
Sure enough, a few days later I saw Gertie with a very large frog hanging out of her mouth, its white belly dangling as she tried to swallow it. I got one blurry photo before she flapped into the sky with her lunch and flew away, only to return the next day and the next. Yikes! Will she keep coming all winter?
I decided to see what my bird books could tell me about migrating herons, but I didn't learn much. All 64 species of herons belong to the Ardeidae family, which also includes bitterns and egrets, but classifying which is which is "fraught with difficulty." Whether my greedy Gertie is a blue, a grey or a purple (there really is a purple), is a puzzlement. The grey heron is frequently referred to as a wading heron, and I've never seen Gertie dip even a toe into the water. Of course that may be because she tried it when I wasn't looking and learned it would end in an embarrassing prat-fall.
Most herons head south when our northern climate gets cold enough to freeze ponds, so I hoped Gertie would vanish before all my frogs vanished.
The agony of the heron war has been difficult, but is nothing compared to the ecstasy of living in the country!
