So long, and thanks for all the fish!

The Phactors pride themselves on having a wild-life friendly yard; it provides lots of cover, water, and food.  This is why so many critters are seen and live on our urban property.  Mrs. Phactor was quite excited to add the great blue heron to her yard life list, but not so happy to see that most of the gold fish living in the lily pond were the price to be paid for the lengthening of her bird list. Yes, with one exception, they were just gold fish, but you do grow attached to them just the same.  Of course TPP grows attached to the plants the bunnies eat too.  So a fish every now and again, no problem, but that was one big, hungry bird.  And thanks to the effective heron discouragement practices of our neighbors (way to go guys!), our big fish were easy pickings. The problem has more or less solved itself as no one, especially a hungry heron, will fish in an empty pond.  But remember this bird, we know where you live!   

New top predator! Reaction mixed!

On several occasions TPP has sought the assistance of top predators, some natural help to control the bunny and squirrel populations, welcoming them to our wildlife friendly estate.  Yesterday and today a new top predator appeared, a great blue heron. This was very exciting because it's the biggest bird ever to visit our property and its a new species for Mrs. Phactor's bird list, and it is a top predator.  But of course it preys upon the wrong wildlife. Fortunately our pond doesn't make the best heron fishing ground because it's too deep, and the neighbors' smaller, shallower pond with many more small gold fish was more attractive, but until a complete fish census has been completed, feelings are mixed about our new visiting top predator. Supposedly a pair of red-tailed hawks have been seen building a nest high atop the lighting towers of a neighboring institution of higher education only 3 blocks away.  Now we talking top predator!

Heron rookery in early spring

The Phactors, other guests, and our country-living hosts all took a pre-dinner nature walk to work up an appetite. The destination was the banks of a nearby river where the great blue herons had returned to their rookery high in a sycamore. For those of you who have never seen a great blue heron please understand that they are a big bird about 1.2-1.4 m tall and 2-4 kg in mass. This shows the top of the tree and less than half of the nests in the rookery. There were 20-30 herons present at the time; it was difficult to get a good count because of comings and goings, and our distance (and somebody didn't bring their spotting scope).  In the summer, the rookery is rather hard to see because of the leaves, but you can hear the birds from some distance especially after the eggs hatch.