The Great Blue Ones

A great blue heron paid the first recorded visit of the species to Caltech the other day, lingering to fish the lily ponds. It was no small spectacle, as the four-foot-tall bird landed gracefully, then leaped into lazy flight with its seven-foot wingspread. But it evidently escaped the notice of two students locked in intense conversation as they strolled the campus at sunset, not even looking up when they unintentionally flushed the visitor into flight.

Alan Cummings, a cosmic ray physicist at Caltech who leads a weekly campus bird walk, confirmed our sighting of the heron and reported that it stayed for two days. He can find no record of a previous visit, although egrets have been seen fishing in the campus ponds, and his bird count now tallies more than 60 species.

Herons have been regular visitors in other surprising locations, however. At the Huntingon Library, Art Galleries and Gardens in San Marino, herons drop in regularly to fish by the fountain in the north vista and in the pond of the Japanese garden, according to Clair Martin III, curator of the Rose Garden and unofficial bird census taker. At the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum in Arcadia, the lagoons and ponds have attracted as many as three herons at a time, according to Barbara Cohen, best known as the Arboretum “bird lady,” who leads the monthly Sunday bird walks. Just the other day, one of the huge birds visited the gardens around the Museum of Natural History in Exposition Park, inspiring a flood of phone calls to Kimball Garrett, collections manager of the ornithology section.

This is breeding time for the herons. The largest rookery, or, more correctly, heronry, is at the Salton Sea, with hundreds of pairs, Garrett told us. As many as 50 nests have been counted at Morro Bay. Smaller colonies have been reported along the coast at Goleta and Long Beach, and at Cachuma and Casitas lakes. And last year a pair of herons produced two offspring at the Whittier Narrows Nature Center’s wildlife lakes, Dean Harvey, natural areas ranger, reported.

The most surprising visits by the great blue herons occur at private swimming pools. It is by no means clear who is the more surprised, the home owners, or the birds, which quickly find that these substantial ponds have nothing worth eating. These vagrants may be permanent Southern California residents on the prowl, or, more likely, strays from the migration that sees some of the great birds moving north, sometimes as far as Canada, for the summer and south, sometimes into Mexico, for the winter. Some migrate following the nesting season, a phenomenal demonstration of strength and energy after a most taxing period in their lives. In that time, apart from the nest building, they preside over a 28-day incubation period, according to Garrett, and the newborns remain another 60 days in the nest before venturing away.

Great blue herons are patient, persistent fishers, standing stock still in the shallows, the gray-blue plumage a camouflage until unsuspecting fish venture close by and are snapped up in the twinkling of an eye. Martin observed one particularly proficient fishing exercise at the Huntington Gardens, where a heron held its spread wings over its head for a prolonged period to create shade from the midday sun, perhaps the better to spot its prey in the water at its feet. But, as many bird stalkers have long since discovered, it is early in the morning, not in the convenience of the middle of the day, that the herons are best observed in places like the Arboretum. Or, if you are extremely fortunate, at sundown on the Caltech campus.