One of the things I like about wooden canoes is that they are nearly silent when paddled in calm water. I prefer wooden paddles, except when paddling in whitewater. My whitewater canoe also isn’t wood, but rather an advanced plastic material that makes the boat nearly indestructible, even if it strikes rocks or other debris. I enjoy the whitewater boat and the thrill of whitewater paddling, but I prefer flatware paddling. For most of my life I paddled in lakes and reservoirs. A fair percentage of the total paddling of my life has been in Sheridan Lake a reservoir in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The lake is relatively small and easy to cover in an hour’s paddle. I enjoyed paddling around the perimeter of the lake, going into small inlets and bays.

One of the treats of paddling in Sheridan Lake was the presence of a pair of Great Blue Herons that showed up every spring. Early in the season, I would occasionally see them both standing in the water near the edge waiting for small fish to swim close enough for a quick bill stab. The fish is then shaken before it is gulped down. Occasionally it would surprise me to see how large a fish a heron could swallow. It seemed like the fish might be too big fro that narrow neck, but I never witnessed a problem.

Herons are patient fishermen. According to one article I read they spend up to 90 percent of their waking hours stalking prey. I’ve known a few human fishers who could do that for a single day, but none who maintained that practice day after day. Herons aren’t strictly monogamous, but they stay with the same partner throughout the nesting season, building the nest together, sharing duties of sitting on the eggs and hunting to feed the young. When the birds are sitting on the eggs, which takes about four weeks, they hunt one at a time. This is when I was most likely to see a heron at Sheridan Lake, so I generally saw them one at a time. Since herons can live 15 to 20 years, I theorize that the birds I saw at the lake were often the same bird year after year.

I’m not sure I could identify an individual by sight, though.

Now that we have moved to a new place, I have discovered that the herons I saw at the lake in South Dakota were a bit atypical. Generally herons for nesting colonies. Out here on the coast we have several large colonies, sometimes called “heroines” or “rookeries.” There is one near our home in Birch Bay State Park with hundreds of breeding pairs. They spread out along the shore and it is not uncommon for us to see dozens, especially after the chicks have hatched and before they have fledged when they are constantly hunting for fish, crabs, and even a few insects.

We call them dinosaur birds, in part because of the sound they make. It sounds otherworldly, like I imagine a pterodactyl might have sounded. Their appearance is quite different from other birds. They are graceful flyers and swimmers and can fly at slow speeds and land quietly. However the transition from standing in the shallows to flight generally involves a bit of splashing and seems somewhat awkward. Calling them dinosaurs, however, isn’t accurate. The fossil record shows they have existed for at least 1.8 million years, but the general thought is that they date back to about 25 million years ago during the Cenozoic age. That’s a far cry from pterodactyls that lived over 200 million years ago.

As I grow older, I think I appreciate looking at herons a bit more. I admire their patience. I appreciate their ability to stand calmly and consume few calories while remaining alert and ready for quick action. The transition from standing completely still to holding a fish in the bill is lightning fast.

It might just be my memory or the fact that I generally view herons while walking these days while I used to view them while paddling, but it seems that the herons out here are a bit smaller than the ones I used to see in South Dakota. It may be that I see a few birds that are younger here. They are still large birds. They can stand up for 4 feet in height and have a wingspan of nearly 6 feet. That’s significantly smaller than the bald eagles which are common around here. Eagles can have a wingspan up to 8 1/2 feet. They are chunkier, weighing between 7 and 14 pounds. Thats a big difference from the herons that might weigh 5 or 6 pounds. The herons stand taller, however. Their long legs and necks make even the silhouette easy to distinguish from an eagle. Eagles soar high in the sky. Herons tend to stay low, gliding near to the water’s surface. Both birds, however, seem to prefer tall trees for nesting.

One of the images I hold of this place is the memory of the birds silhouetted in the evening appearing as graceful dark figures against the reflection of the water.

Yesterday we took a tour of Point Roberts, the western end of the border between the US and Canada, the longest border in the world. There is a monument on a bluff above the shore that marks the spot and you can stand with one leg in each country there. To get to Point Roberts from our town involves a 20-nile drive through Canada. Point Roberts has several lovely parks with walking trails leading to the water where there is plenty of bird watching. We could see dozens of eagles soaring over the cliffs and multiple herons patiently fishing in the shallows. In the surf they seem to prefer standing on rocks as they look for the tiny heron swimming in the shallows. We did a fair amount of walking, but we also had time to just stand and watch. We aren’t as patient as the herons, but we took enough time to lear a bit from them.