Great Blue Heron domesticity

I was going to write a serious political post tonight -- and maybe I'll get to work on it later. But this afternoon the nesting Great Blue Herons at Golden Gate Park's Stow Lake put on such a show that they come first.

An island on the west side of the lake serves annually as a Heron nursery.


If you look up one hundred fifty feet to the tops of the cypress trees, if you are lucky, you'll see heads silhouetted against the sky.


A little magnification reveals more heads. As I walked around the lake, a great squawking came from the trees.


A discussion seemed to be going on.


Or perhaps a domestic squabble -- who's going to go fish for dinner? The adolescents are getting noisy.


Oh -- all right, I'll go.




Peace has returned to the nest.

The Great Blue Herons have nested at Stow Lake every year since the early 1990s. They are worth a visit; go check them out and you can make up your own anthropomorphic fable.