Common Birds 56 - Great Blue Heron

Monday, January 15

I had a bizarre encounter with a heron Friday. It was late in the day, I was finished with work, heading out on one final walk before heading to daycare. The light was low and soft orange. I approached the trailhead through the parking lot and saw a great blue heron coming up out of the pond and getting onto the trail. We noticed each other and froze. Despite herons knowing that they can fool fish and frogs into thinking they’re not threatening merely by standing still, my stillness convinced him that I wasn’t an immediate threat. So he relaxed and started picking his way into the woods. 

Rather than follow directly, I took one of the secret entrances that would intersect the main trail just inside the woods. I hurried into position and waited. I guess I was expecting the heron to walk past, but I was not ready for just how it was going to walk past. I was expecting it to be kind of crouched, sort of hunched, sneaking its way through the trees - discrete. Instead, the heron had risen to its full four-foot height, holding itself perfectly straight, and just sauntering down the trail, bobbing its head with every step. It moved like a chicken, if a chicken was enormous, gangly, and had a spear strapped to its face. Watching it walk past, I suddenly felt an uncanny role reversal. Here I was, acting like a heron, crouched and perfectly still, while the heron was acting just like a human, casually upright and striding down the trail like he owned the place. 

Then today, because we had a dusting of snow, I could see the clear prints of a heron who had beaten me out to the trail. Later, I saw heron tracks even further into the woods, so now I’m mentally preparing myself for the day where I see the heron nonchalantly walking towards me on the trail and I have to make the split second decision as we walk past each other: smile and nod, or just not make eye contact.