Yesterday

Yesterday, a clucking/clattering sound came from the closest nest, steady but irregular (building then tapering but never dying entirely.) I though at first it was starlings, but realized that now is the time for chicks to be hatching. Other nests that earlier had appeared abandoned had birds standing on them, though some are indeed abandoned. Not as many as I feared. Perhaps birds were hunkered down on eggs and therefore not visible.

I'm reading a library book, The Great Blue Heron, by Robert Butler, who draws his data from coastal B.C. Fledging of young takes 3 months, according to Butler, so given an August 15 end-of-breeding date here in Olympia, now is the time for hatching of chicks.

A man riding along Rogers St with 5 small children on bicycles pointed down toward where I was parked and said: "The herons live down that street." So the secret location of the rookery is out.

Butler mentions, however, the urban locations of some B.C. rookeries--most notably the longstanding one in Stanley Park.