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FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 24, 1906. 
In a Heron Village. 
BY WILLIAM L. FINLEY. 
With Photographs from Life by Herman T. Bohlman. 
Of all the sights and sensations that break 
into a bird-lover’s experience, the most lasting, 
perhaps, is when he first steps from the quieter 
wood scenes and suddenly emerges into the very 
heart of a busy bird town. The eyes pop as 
wide and the pulse beats as fast as that of a 
backwoods boy when he first walks into the very 
midst of, a modern three-ringed circus in full 
swing. 
Fifteen miles below my home in the heart of 
the fir forest, is a village of two hundred houses. 
It has an area of about three acres. Every 
home is' a skyscraper. Not a single house is 
less than a hundred and thirty feet up, and some 
are a hundred and sixty feet high. The in¬ 
habitants are feathered fishers. They hunt the 
waterways of the Columbia and the "Willamette 
for milesj. Each owns his own claim, and there 
is never a dispute as to possession. 
It takes the biggest reserve of nerve and 
muscle to reach this village, but one may sit on 
the wooded hillside far below and watch life 
there in full swing. From two to five brush- 
heap houses, the size of a washtub. are care¬ 
fully balanced and securely fastened in the top 
limbs of each tree. Gaunt, long-legged citizens 
stand about the airy doorways and gossip in 
hoarse croaks. Residents are continually com¬ 
ing and going, some flapping in from the feed¬ 
ing grounds with craws full of fish and frogs, 
others sweeping down the avenues between the 
pointed firs with a departing guttural squawk. 
One of the most risky and perilous pieces of 
work ever done in the treetop was accomplished 
here in the tall firs in getting the nest and eggs 
of the great blue heron (Ardea herodias), 
The photographer had selected the most “climb- 
able-looking” stronghold in the heronry, where 
the nearest nest was 130 feet up. But after the 
long, arduous ascent, he found that both nests 
contained newly hatched birds. Just fifteen feet 
away in the branches of an adjoining tree was 
a nest containing four eggs. To get this, the 
photographer strapped himself carefully in the 
branches and wrapped his legs about the trunk. 
With a rope, he lassoed the broken end of a 
limb on the adjoining tree and by slipping the 
cord back and forth, worked the rope up to the 
trunk. A slow, steady pull and the tops of the 
trees bent closer together. The tension became 
stronger and stronger between the two trees 
until at four feet, it looked like a huge catapult 
that might suddenly be sprung and shoot the 
climber into space. In another instant, an 
aerial bridge was formed in the treetop, while 
the photographer secured his prize. 
The heronries in the Oregon forests are 
pretty well protected from the raids of a bird 
photographer by reason of their great height 
from the ground. For several years we hunted 
for a colony of these birds where a good series 
of photographs could be taken. We never found 
one in Oregon, but we did discover one in Cali¬ 
fornia last summer. 
Down in the swamp regions at the lower end 
of San Francisco Bay. is a narrow wooded belt 
reaching out about a mile, and it is about 200 
yards in width. When we approached this 
thicket, we saw the trees were well loaded with 
nests. We skirted the edge of the belt, looking 
for an entrance, but to our surprise, each place 
we tried was barred with a perfect mass of 
tangled bushes and trees. We crawled through 
in one place for a few feet, but over and 
through all was a network of poison-oak and 
blackberry that we could not penetrate. There 
was not the sign of a path. After two hours, 
we went to the point opposite the largest tree 
and decided to push and cut our way through. 
The first few yards we crawled on our hands and 
knees, pushing our cameras or dragging them 
behind. Unable to crawl further, we had to 
clear a way and climb a ten-foot brush-heap. 
For a few yards we ducked under and wiggled 
along in the bed of a ditch in mire to our knees. 
I never saw such a tangled mass of brush. 
Fallen limbs and trees of alder, swamp maple 
and willow were interlaced with blackberry 
brier, poison-oak and the rankest growth of 
nettles. All the while we were assailed by an 
increasing . mob of starving mosquitoes that 
went raving mad at the taste of blood. We 
pushed on, straining, sweating, crawling and 
.climbing for a hundred yards that seemed more 
like a mile. 
We forgot it all the minute we stood under 
the largest sycamore. It was seven feet thick 
at the base, and a difficult proposition to climb. 
But this was the center of business activity in 
the heron village. The monster was 120 feet 
high and had a spread of limbs equal to its 
height. In this single tree, we counted forty- 
one blue heron nests and twenty-eight night 
heron (Nycticorax nycticorax tuevius) nests; 
sixty-nine nests in one tree. In another tree 
were seventeen of the larger nests, and twenty- 
eight of the smaller. 
The great blue heron or “crane” is one of the 
picturesque sights of every fish pond and along 
the banks of every river in the country. I look 
for him along the shallow sandbars and sloping 
banks as I look for the background of green 
trees. He is always the solitary fisher. He is 
the bit of life that draws the whole to a focus. 
Watch him, and he stands as motionless as a 
stick. He is patient. A minnow or frog swims 
past and there is a lightning flash of that pointed 
bill as he pins him a foot below the surface. 
Disturb him and he deliberately spready a pair 
of wings that fan six feet of air, and dangles 
his long legs to the next stand just out of 
range. 
Nature has built the heron in an extremely 
practical way. She dressed him in colors of 
sky and water. She did not plant his eyes in 
the top of his head as she did the woodcock, 
because he is not likely to be injured from 
above, but she put them right on the lower 
sloping side of his head so he could look 
straight down at his feet without the slightest 
side turn. She let his legs grow too long for 
perching conveniently on a tree, just so he 
could wade in deep enough to fish. She gave 
him a dagger-shaped bill at the end of a neck 
that was both long enough to reach bottom as 
well as to keep his eyes high above water, so 
he could see and aim correctly at the creature 
below surface. 
It is said that occasionally a pair of great 
blue herons will build an isolated nest, but I 
never found one. The heron likes a remote 
fishing preserve of his own, but he loves to 
live in a small village community to which he 
can return each evening and enjoy the social 
life among his neighbors and dwell in mutual 
protection. 
He is a remarkable bird in adapting himself 
to circumstances. In a bird of such long legs 
and of such proportions one would naturally 
Family of three full grown great blue herons in nest on top of sycamore tree. Photo by Finley and Bohlman. 
