Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Pond Clowns

I must admit like most of you I am not a big fan of Blue Herons on my pond, not too crazy about them chompin on my fish, craping on the dock, freaking out the dogs..ect..ect. That being said, I have never seen a nest of young herons before and was amazed at how differnt they look from adults. These young are about the size of a smaller canadian goose, dark in color and look more like a loon. We have seven of them perched in our trees ( or should I say attempting to perch in our trees) these birds are a absoulte riot to watch, they take turns racing around the pond and the house almost slaming mid air with each other, when the try to land in the trees I would say they land correctly only seventy five percent of the time. They swim as well as any duck and im told that they stay this way for about three years before the young start to look like mom and dad.

i've seen baby owls, turkeys, just about every other bird except GBH and egrets both of which are year round residents between my pond and the ranchpond. we also have black crowned night heron, but they're more rare.

your story reminds me of our clowns. last night my wife and I watched two adult egrets compete for precious branch roosting space with our resident turkey flock. we have about 20 birds (turkeys) that come in every night, walk road to our garage (we live on a ledge) and one by one clumsily fly up into our pines. they lose feathers, bat against small branches, break branches, its always a cliffhanger to see if they make it or not. only last night they had competition, was first time egrets have come so close to house to roost, the battle for this one branch went on about 10 minutes til the egrets were way out on end......though they all ended up spending night happily ever after.