By The love affair starts with a drive along Big Sewickley Creek Road. It winds along the creek, hopping from Allegheny County to Beaver County and back. Just up the short hill past the Hanson Asphalt Plant you cast your eyes to the right and there it is.
Giant blue-gray birds, alien to a Pittsburgh youth of the ’50s and ’60s, rebuild some three dozen stick nests atop tall sycamore trees. Great blue herons have returned for another nesting season, and to delight me and my camera.
I’m not alone in noticing the resurgence of great blue heron. According to National Aviary ornithologist Bob Mulvihill, the first Atlas of Breeding Birds of Pennsylvania noted there were 114 confirmed breeding locations from 1984-1989. By the time of the second atlas from 2004-2009, there was a 78 percent increase in confirmed breeding locations. The increase was especially noticeable in Allegheny, Beaver, Westmoreland and northern Washington counties.
Individual nest counts by the Pennsylvania Game Commission increased from 1,654 in 1994 to 2,734 in the second atlas period, 2004-2009. Mulvihill notes great blues have “undoubtedly benefitted primarily from two things: improved water quality since federal laws were enacted in the early 1970s, and a greatly reduced level of persecution by humans.”
Sticks in beak, the heron swoop among the tight branches, miraculously not striking the trees with their six-foot wingspan. They land on the end of a branch and maintain their balance as the branch wobbles under the weight. Creeping along the branch to the nest, a bird strategically places a stick as if it’s a reverse game of heron Jenga.
Suddenly, jailbreak! Dozens of birds croak in unison as they leap from nests and perches and fly off in every direction of the compass. A predator has been sensed. A quick scan of the sky reveals no loitering red-tail hawk or other danger. Gradually, all the birds return in ones and twos. Maybe it was just a drill…
The birds preen and groom with their long yellow beaks. New sticks arrive and are carefully placed in the nest. An occasional territorial conflict will be announced by vigorous croaking and flapping of wings.
The routine will continue until eggs hatch and feeding the young will take over. But by then the leaves of the surrounding trees will draw a green curtain down to hide this wonderful world from human eyes.
— Bob Donaldson