kayakers who know of my love of nature and
point out sights they may have spotted that
morning.
The first set of arrivals every spring tend
to be mergansers and other varieties of
colourful ducks passing through on their
way to their summer homes. A local tip led
me to an area where there is a great blue
heron rookery. This is a somewhat isolated
area with around ten to 12 nests high up in
dead trees. I was able to find a spot on top
of a hill that gave me a bird’s eye view of the
nests. In spring, the herons are busy repair-
ing their nests, followed by warming the
eggs and then feeding the little ones.
Great blue herons typically nest in col-
onies, called heronries. A heronry may have
anywhere from five to 500 breeding pairs.
They build large platform nests high in
trees. They may also use nesting platforms.
Two to six eggs are laid, and incubation
lasts about 28 days. It is a fascinating sight,
though sometimes gut-wrenching to see
how it is survival of the fittest. When the
parent comes in to feed, there is a mass
frenzy and often there is a single, weaker
baby left out. One year, I saw that one of the
babies was either kicked out of the nest or
fell out and was stuck on a lower branch by
itself, unlikely to survive on its own.
The same is true for mergansers and
other ducks. I’ve often seen them in ear-
ly summer with a troupe of 12 babies and
watched how this number got whittled down
to a handful. The lake has predators ready
for a feast from below or from above the
water, including fish, mink and weasels.
The bird life in the area consists of mal-
lards, loons, mergansers, blue jays, gray jays,
great blue herons, Canada geese, kingfish-
ers—which are dicult to photograph—
and cedar waxwings, as well as a variety ofClockwise from
top left: Great
blue herons in
a feeding frenzy;
a fellow kayaker
(in blue kayak)
capturing a shot
of the mallard
perched on Mark’s
kayak; a young
deer poses at the
water’s edge.11