Great Blue Heron

I saw many birds during today's early-morning walk to the lake in my small Canadian city, but one bird stood out, then flew away.

During the who walk to the lake, crows croaked, on the ground, on treetops, on buildings.  Chilcotins  here call them ravens, but a Shuswap once told me they are mostly crows, which have black legs and feet, which she said raven's don't have.  Both Chilcotins and Shuswaps venerate ravens.  Many who venerate ravens know a dance called the Crow Hop, originally from Prairie indigenous people.    

Dozens of gulls milled in the parking lot between the curling rink and the rodeo grounds, too late to curl, to early to ride.  I don't know anyone who venerates gulls.

Redwing blackbirds are another story, and bird, rare enough to attract bird experts from far away.  One expert spoke at the lakeside nature centre a couple years ago.  A couple trees by the lake were a-chirp with these robin-sized birds.  Crows croaked in the same trees.  Two weeks ago, I saw my first robin of the year.

Geese honked on the ice and overhead.  Ducks paddled about.  A couple geese would waddle ahead of me on the road back from the lake, which the city surrounds.  Some would be on the rodeo grounds.

I interrupt this bird saga to mention three deer I saw yesterday in the field by my apartment building.  I now return to today and birds.

I walked the trail that goes to the tip of the peninsula in the lake, the woods and sky alive with the rustle and song of birds, geese milling and honking on the lake, ducks swimming in the few patches of open water.  I looked down the lake, the risen sun orange on the water, then turned around and looked over the city and the three kilometres I had walked.  I stood there long, thinking, happy to see another spring.

Then I started walking back on the peninsula trail.  I took a detour along a narrower trail that boasts some wooden walkways.  I stopped to look over an expanse of last year's cattails, dry and akimbo.

Then I saw it, across the cattails, at water's edge:  a great blue heron.  It was the first time I saw this long-beaked, tall, skinny, blue bird.  Stately.  Pretty.  Strong.  Within three seconds it launched itself quietly into flight.  I stood watching it fly out over the lake, which is a kilometre wide, five long, and very deep, like most lakes in the Western Cordillera.  Neighboring Quesnel Lake is 600 metres deep.     

The Boreal Forest around where I grew up had different birds, but never this bird.  It had chickadees, and I heard some as I walked this morning.  It had blue jays, sparrows, robins, starlings, grouse with their noisy flutter.  Where I live now, south of the Boreal Forest, I have seen eagles, hawks, owls, bluebirds.  A couple weeks ago I saw an eagle launch from a ditch:  six-foot wingspan, it seemed.

Today I saw a great blue heron for the first time in my life.  This shouldn't surprise me because I live along a major migration route for birds.  The local nature centre organizes a yearly bird-count day in which people recognize dozens of birds.  Today's heron counted for me.