COMMENT OF THE DAY: DISTURBANCE AT THE HERON HOUSE “We have six pairs nesting in an oak in our yard — they are beautiful birds, but foul creatures. For the next few months, our yard will be littered with crawfish shells and carcasses of frogs and fish. It’s living at the flamingo exhibit at the zoo. And then, when they are too prolific, they’ll start pushing the ‘surplus’ young out of the nests high in the trees and leave them to die in the street below. Again, they are beautiful to look at but difficult to live with.” [Txcon, commenting on Headlines: Marfreless’s Last Call; Salata’s National Expansion]
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Heartbreaking. Now, if only herons could post comments about the s&^% we do to them…..
I had two mating pairs of red wing hawks nesting next door to me. They liked to hunt in my giant live oak, leaving half eaten birds all over my back yard. An occasional dead bird duty is nothing compared to the treat of seeing these bird soaring above my home. The Yellow Crown Night Herons have nested in the neighborhood, but have not found their way to my live oak. I would be more than happy to scoop up their leftovers to have those wonderful birds in my backyard.
My parents had yellow crown night herons above the yard for a few years. It was froggy and poopy, but it wasn’t outrageous or difficult to clean. And it was fun to watch those birds.
Our house in Memorial had nesting owls. And while you would not believe what those birds poop, usually on your car, it was still nice having them there. Of course, we couldn’t have kittens in the neighborhood for obvious reasons.
One nesting pair is nature’s wonder. Six absurdly fertile and infanticidal nesting pairs is a chore best resolved with a pellet gun and a barbecue pit.
We have them in out spring branch neighborhood each spring. They were in our trees one nesting season and I admit feeling relieved when they decided my neighbors oak was nicer. Now I get to enjoy them and their sound without the mess. It is neat to see the little ones grow up and learn to fly.
I love the wildlife in our neighborhood. We have possums, squirrels, a red tailed hawk and what appears to be a falcon. I’ve even seen some barn owls and a few armadillos. It’s like Wild Kingdom for a 1/4 acre lot near the med center. I would just like it more if a few of our spring and summer visitors moved to another tree in someone else’s yard. Let you is not without herons cast the first egg, as it were.
My parents have had a killdeer mother that nests in the middle of their gravel driveway every year. I don’t know if it’s the same bird, but that nest has been there every year for about 25 years. Lays the eggs right on top of the gravel. It’s a pain in the neck driving around the nest every day, but my pop puts a traffic cone next to it so we can see it. I’ll never understand why the little bugger continues to nest right there. She goes bananas if you get close to it, pretending to be injured so that you’ll go after her and leave her eggs alone. But every spring, she comes back. A few weeks goes by, and one day we find nothing but empty eggshells. I have no idea how she gets the chicks out of there.
Nothing a ravenous and most prolific predator on the face of the planet can’t fix. The common house cat. Sufferin Succotash!
Confidential to Allyn West: I see your classic R.E.M. reference, and I appreciate it.
Back in the late 90’s I was living on Bayland in the Woodland heights, and the yellow crowned night herons would nest in the oaks along the street. You could tell which trees they were in by the snow-white splats of heron poo in the roadway. One of my neighbors innocently made the mistake of parking his land rover at curbside right before the start of “heron season”, and then must have gone out of town for a few months, since that car stayed parked there until midsummer and got completely whitewashed with heron poop.
We’ve got Black Bellied Whistling Ducks nesting in trees on the East End near Mason Park. Parking cars in garages and broad-billed hats seem to be making comebacks around here.
Wait, I thought Houston was a barren wasteland with rivers of concrete that hurt the environment?
Guess it’s not so bad with all this nesting going on.