Herons, All: A Story of the Young Spring
originally published in Lightning Tree's Newsletter: April 7, 2023
As a slow Spring comes to Southwest Colorado, with blowing snow and elm buds, here is a tale to usher us, and perhaps the sun, onwards. Watch for a program announcement coming soon!
Herons, All
There are great, blue dinosaurs devouring adorable vegetarians out in the countryside.
This is a story of joy and of hope, I promise, but the path is treacherous, painful and real.
Welcome to my backyard.
Here, in Southwest Colorado, the Florida River cuts a mesa in two.
(That’s pronounced flor-eee-dah in this land that was once called Mexico.)
Mouache and Caputa bands of the Southern Ute Tribe call this land home. The checkerboard map of tribal and non-tribal land speaks to a history of removal, of changes beyond comprehension.
And the herons saw it all.
Their eyes, sharper than a human’s by two or three times, watched as native guides brought europeans up from Santa Fe, following their own ancient trails.
Herons stalked on their hollow, exaggerated legs as cows began to crash over the mesa.
The herons sheltered under rock cliffs as the topsoil blew away, no longer held fast by the roots of pinõn & juniper, of deep grasses, of biscuit roots, lilies, and a thousand other ephemeral foods of hoof and human. Almost all was lost to the appetite and crushing weight of a domestic cow that simply wouldn’t give the land time to recover.
The herons cleaned themselves of the dust, preening with a beak on the end of a curving neck with more than twice the number of vertebrae as ours - a bill that can reach every place on their body. Imagine touching and cleaning every inch of yourself with only your lips.
They tasted the change that came over the land, as the river and fish became polluted with mining tailings, with oil and antifreeze runoff, with the herbicides and pesticides of the farmers who now call this place home.
The heron’s meals grew smaller as the largest fish were lost to disease, to overfishing, and to dam after dam - each river becoming walled off at either end, tourniquets on the life waters of the West.
Some herons experienced these changes in a way we just can’t understand: from the brim of a feathered hat, their beautiful plumes no longer their own for dancing in courtship.
Until the protection of birds by law, herons were among those shot for the fashion of the time - fashion being one of the few tools of influence, status, and control available to the property of a husband, also known as a woman.
And they soared, on six feet of wing, watching the prairie dogs and buffalo and passenger pigeon. They flew through time, flapping slowly, to arrive here, now. Safe, whole, and able to stand. Perhaps they feel the loss, and perhaps they simply feel the wind, the rocks, and the water.
Perhaps they feel joy, and hope. Let's see.
This last month, just south of road 172, in the Florida River valley, that most locals think of as the hill right before the turn for the airport, the herons are nesting.
In the heights of a cottonwood grove, their nests sit empty through the winter, visible from the road as we speed down and up the sides of the valley. I look often, hoping for that first glimpse of the returning herons.
And then, just as winter’s back begins to break, after the chickadees and finches begin to sing, as the first green leaves are visible under the melting snow, just before the first meadowlark, the first robin, before the first flicker calls, before the garlic has broken the surface of the garden, and almost three weeks before the turkey vultures return, there they are:
Floating footballs in the distance, hovering above the nests in the top of the cottonwoods.
The next month is a beautiful ceremony of building and courting, of wooing and working:
The male heron is the first to land, returning to the colony where he nested before, where he was born, or perhaps he's coming for the first time. He's looking for a gift for his lady-to-be. The gift is the right spot to build.
He may choose a nest that is well-established, one that has withstood the snows of winter, that will stand firm in the outrageous winds of spring. Hopefully, he chooses one that will not fall with the unpredictable cottonwood, as they are known to drop their branches without much warning.
And, like my own awkward middle school self, hormones on fire and heart hopeful, I have seen a male heron standing upon a pitiful platform, a few sticks resting, sometimes falling, from the outskirts of a tree. This isn’t his year. We’ve all been there.
Herons do not mate for life, so there is always a chance for those yearling males and those old bachelors. They will posture and poke, and may have a scuffle or two to work out who gets to advertise that particular crook in the tree, but they will leave each other whole, maybe knowing that the strength of their rookery is in each other.
Once, there was a heron rookery north of Durango on the Animas River. One year, the eagles came, taking the heron chicks, one by one, day after day, while the parents screamed and dove, and failed. Perhaps their nests were too far apart. Perhaps they didn’t have enough adults to protect the nests. Perhaps it was just the eagles’ time for plenty.
The herons don’t nest there anymore.
So, the males will compete, but they know who will be looking out for them once the eggs are laid.
And it’s time! They’re here! Get out those fancy plumes, and tidy up that pile of sticks!
The females arrive, circling and inspecting the males and their chosen sites, looking for any improvements that have already been done. When they settle in and begin to pick and poke at the male’s chosen roost, the dance begins.
Bills snap, necks stretch, moans and calls fill the air, wheeling flights and high courtship comes to the land, and may it ever be so.
It is early March, and I am driving. In the short time it takes to drive into and out of the Florida Valley, I search, frantic for a glimpse of whirling flight, of arching necks. With the window down, I listen through the cold air for their love poems, for their wooing words and most elegant performances.
As it goes with all of us, the wooing is only the beginning. Once a choice has been made, the real work begins.
The female takes up her spot on top of the nest and waits to see just how worthy this male is. She may like his moves, his song and style, but, the world over, what does it matter if he can’t bring home the right stuff?
Sticks are the bones of a heron nest, and they have to be just right. The male brings his mate one at a time, and offers it to her.
She takes the stick in her bill, weighs it, tastes it, feels its strength and its give…
And tosses it out of the tree.
Who knows the heart of the heron who has brought ten sticks, all rejected? Does he feel rejection? Does she hold contempt in her heart? Or, do they feel some deep comfort of a shared compact - to build this nest strong and true, that it may hold their most precious treasures?
Is that compact made of words, or is it a living memory of trust and growth, formed first in their own filled bellies, fed as chicks in the safety of their parents’ nest?
I wonder these things.
With perseverance, and perhaps patience, the nest is fixed, added to, or built from scratch. She is the engineer, the builder and master architect. He is the supplier of sticks. They are an efficient team. In about a week, the work is done, the nest ready to be filled.
Necks will arch, songs will be sung, and as the children’s bed is laid, the back-hop-dance will bring the herons’ cloacas together for that brief moment that we all hail from.
I remember the pictures of my pregnant mother and expectant father, hammer in hand, sawdust in the air, building the cabin that I would soon grow up in. The bringing of gifts, the giving of food, the radio blasting 60’s love songs. Perhaps we are herons, all.
But, I promised joy, hope, and dinosaurs. And unfortunate vegetarians.
While the eggs grow in the nest, each parent warms them, and each parent hunts. Like a dinosaur.
Herons evolved from dinosaurs. Birds, we are coming to know more and more, are the closest living relatives of some of those extinct beings. Some dinosaurs were feathered and could even fly.
And some stalked on two legs, tiny arms at their sides.
Tyrannosaurus.
Called theropods, the same group Tyrannosaurus rex comes from, is also the group that made herons.
Now, imagine the heron, arriving at the side of a swollen river. Melt and rainwater have filled not only the banks, but the ground in the valley with water. And there, dashing away from the soaked field, up to drier ground, is a vole.
A grass-eating mammal, slightly bigger than a mouse, with a short tail, barely noticeable ears, and a flat, adorable face, voles travel along paths made in the grass, often invisible to a passing human.
Does the heron see the movement under the grass? Can they see the ultraviolet reflection on the vole’s urine along its path? Do their keen ears hear the sound of tiny bites of fresh, green leaves?
In a flash, the strike is done.
In the beak of the heron is a winter-fed, hearty and heavy vole.
For a moment, the heron pauses, the world seems to stop, and the vole stares at their fate.
The S-shaped neck raises up, the bill opens, and down goes the vole.
I watch as the lump slowly slides down that curving throat.
In a few hours, another lump will come back up that throat, this one made only of fur and bones, to be coughed out. When the heron flies, there is likely to be a white squirt from their back.
And thus is alchemy done in the physical world.
Alchemy is also happening inside those eggs, nestled safe under a downy chest and belly, as yolk and white transforms into bone, muscle, brain, and a growing desire to pierce, to fledge, to fly.
It is April, and the chorus frogs are singing in the snowmelt ponds. The winds of spring have arrived, and I worry over those herons, swaying in the branches, watching over their soon-to-come babies.
This is the story thus far, and it is far from complete. May it ever be so.
Down here, in the valley just south of the highway, the joy and hope of continuing life is happening. And there is pain, and it is real. After all, we are vole and heron alike.
So, as we court this world, may we share in plumed dances, in song, in good meals, and in the blossoming hope of spring.
Theodore Packard
Florida Mesa, Southern Ute Tribal Lands
April 6, 2023
Photo Credits, in order of appearance:
Herman the Heron and a Neck full of Chicken, Florida Valley, Florida Rookery
c. Ted Packard
Fig. 5, 3, 10: The Wilson Bulletin, Vol. 88, No. 2, June 1976
Heron & Vole c. Filip Tkaczyk, used with gerenous permission by friend and author of Tracks & Sign of Reptiles & Amphibians, available from Stackpole books.
His podcast, Animism: Listening to the Land is available wherever you listen to podcasts. He is an instructor at Ravens Roots Naturalist School in Western Washington, and can tell you who is coming down the trail because a little bird told him.
PS: Their knees look backwards. But they’re not knees, they’re ankles.
Thank you for writing this! It was a really nice piece. It made me miss home! I grew up near a bird refuge in Roberts, Idaho. <3