Feb. 12, 2023 - St. Andrews Heron Rookery

Last week we took a day trip to St Andrews State Park, located in Panama City Beach, Florida. One of the park features is a small pond with an island in the middle. The island is used by Great Blue Herons as a nesting site. A group of nests like this is called a rookery. Several nests with herons on them can be seen in this photo. To get this wide view of the island, I took six individual photos, scanning the island from left to right. Then I stitched them together using Photoshop.

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Here's the rookery enforcer. This big Alligator is the king of the pond. The birds are taking a calculated risk by nesting on the island. If any of the chicks fall out of the nest, they will be taken by the gator. On the other hand, the presence of “Big Al” keeps any predators like Raccoons, Foxes, or Coyotes away so the herons don’t have to worry about them.

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It’s hard to get a good photo at a rookery because of all the tree branches. Fortunately, at this time of the year, all the leaves are off the trees, so they are not in the way. Both of these Herons have the long, white plumes they get during the breeding season. The nest is quite large, to accommodate these big birds. It appears to be made entirely out of small sticks woven together

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Other Great Blue Herons were occupying the trees along the edge of the pond. This one is doing a courtship display. The other two birds in this photo are Anhingas.

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There was a lot of activity around this pond, so I was able to get some nice flight shots.

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Until I enlarged the previous photo, I didn’t realize that the heron had a stick in its mouth. I’m sure this stick was to be added to the bird’s nest hidden among the trees.

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