i apologize if you've been on the edge of your seat since june 13 , wondering and worrying whether the GBH (great blue heron) landed outside my windows so it could munch on baby birds or their eggs nesting in the spartina. in the course of my research i learned herons feast on fishes, frogs, salamanders, lizards, snakes, small mammals, shrimps, crabs, insects -and birds. Yikes! but i still think my first guess was right, that the june 13 heron stopped off out of curiosity, to check out theo our resident parrot, rather than to raid nests. the heron's also made a second fly-by since then to case our joint and parrot further.
and through my version of extensive research (we have approximately 4,000 books on birds to skim), i discovered we do have two avian families occupying the tidal meadow on our side of the river: red winged blackbirds and eastern kingbirds. they are of similar size, both mostly black. obviously the well-known blackbirds are trimmed in red and yellow at the base of the wing, while the kingbirds wear tuxedos with black backs, white undersides and a white band across the base of their tail that looks like ric-rac in flight. they all dart about quickly which is why it took a while to ID the kingbirds - they're fast and not so binocular friendly, and i of course must rely on others with swift feet to dash to the windows when i shriek it's the right time to get a closer look at somebody.
kingbirds compete with GBH's for food a little, eating frogs, small fish and aquatic insects, while their marsh meadow neighbors the red winged blackbirds live on seeds, grain and insects like dragonflies and mayflies. when nesting they both do their utmost to ward off GBH's. maybe that's where theo comes in handy, a loud, colorful, exotic distraction, unintentionally protecting the marsh nestlings by distracting the GBH so artfully from his perch inside.
