Poetry Friday: Herons

Last Poetry Friday, as I mentioned in my post last week, was a holiday. I didn't really take the day off -- I worked almost all day -- but that meant that I had time on Saturday to read all the Poetry Friday posts. I tried to comment on all of them, too, but an inordinate number of my comments disappeared into the ether. Maybe some of them were just awaiting comment moderation. I hope so. In any case, if your post didn't get a comment from me, please don't be offended. I tried.

I recently discovered this poem about the Great Blue Heron, "Great Blue Heron," by T. Alan Broughton.

Here's a bit from the middle: 

Today the bird stays with me, as if I am moving through

the heron’s dream to share his sky or water—places

he will rise into on slow flapping wings or where

his long bill darts to catch unwary frogs.

 

 

And here's another line I love:

 

 

I only know this bird by a name we’ve wrapped him in,

 

 

(Click through to read the whole poem - it's worth it!)

 

After reading the poem, I went through my life list to see how many different kinds of herons I've seen. Fifteen! That's just amazing and makes me feel wealthy beyond imagining! (eBird lists 45 heron species in the world. Further research reveals that egrets and bitterns are also herons and if you include all of those, there are 72 species. But I'm sticking with my original 45, which is just the ones with heron in their common name. And out of that bunch, I've seen a third of them!) 

 

I'll share my list of the herons I've seen at the end of this post. But before that, here are some heron poems about some of my sightings. After all, as Broughton says, we only know these birds by the names we've wrapped them in.

 

I've only seen Black Herons once, on a boat ride in December. They're not as common as the other kinds we have here in Uganda. They are known for their umbrella style of hunting, which you can see in the video, where it's speculated that hunching their wings in an umbrella shape reduces the reflections and helps them see what could be on the menu for them.

 

 

Black Heron

 

Rainy morning.
Abandoned black umbrella
hunts menacingly in the hallway.
Sorry - no fish here.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

I have Rufescent Tiger-Herons on seven checklists.  They live throughout much of South America. It's the juveniles that are the stripiest (see the picture), though the adults do have some stripes also.

 

Juvenile Rufescent Tiger-Heron

Photo Source: Wikipedia

Rufescent Tiger-Heron

Tiger-Heron so Rufescent,
I find your diet far from pleasant.
Your dragonflies I won’t be stealing:
To me they sound quite unappealing.

But I do like your stripy feathers,
The way you hunt in all the weathers,
Your strident bullfrog voice so loud,
Your reddish coloring so proud,
Tiger-Heron so Rufescent
I find you immensely pleasant.

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

I have Great Blue Herons on twenty-seven checklists. Birders talk about "spark birds," the ones that make you start being interested in birding, and the Great Blue Heron is one of mine. I found out in 2018 about a GBH fitted with a transmitter that informed scientists she was wintering in Haiti. I wrote two poems about her: Nokomis, the Great Blue Heron, Winters in Haiti in 2018 and Requiem for Nokomis when she stopped transmitting in 2021. I also wrote this poem about a GBH my son watched in Massachusetts.

Cellphone photo of GBH I saw in Georgia last summer

Here's my life list of herons, from the most recent to the longest ago:

Black Heron

Purple Heron

Squacco Heron

Black-headed Heron

Gray Heron

Cocoi Heron

Rufescent Tiger-Heron

Green Heron

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron

Tricolored Heron

Little Blue Heron

Striated Heron

Whistling Heron

Great Blue Heron

 

 

Mary Lee has this week's roundup.