Graceful herons plague Cent. Wash. backyards

The great blue heron: graceful flier, stealthy hunter, solitary explorer.

Backyard bandit?

That's right. The tall, slender bird that graces the shorelines of rivers, lakes and ponds of North Central Washington has been turning up in residential Wenatchee Valley yards, pilfering goldfish and koi from ponds.

"One day in the spring, I looked out my window and said 'What the heck is that?' " said Rick Bryant, who watched a heron eat a dozen of his backyard fish in just over a week at his home on Schafer Street. "I went out to scare him off, but he just flew up on my neighbor's roof and looked at me. It would be back out there in the pond the next day."

"We've lived in this house for 22 years and I've never seen a heron in town," he said. "You always see them along the river."

Wildlife experts can't say for sure why they are doing it, but they do know that the numbers of blue herons nesting along the Columbia and Wenatchee rivers near Wenatchee took a big jump this year. And more people in the past couple of years have reported seeing them feeding in urban areas of the valley.

"With an increase in the numbers of nests, we are starting to find them (birds) in places not found before," said Von Pope, fish and wildlife director for the Chelan County PUD. "They are normally sensitive to human activity. But that doesn't appear to be the case anymore with some of these birds."

He added that with more birds feeding along the river banks, some may be looking elsewhere for food.

"They are becoming accustomed to the residential way of life," he said.

For several years, there was just one nesting rookery near Wenatchee, just upriver from Rock Island Dam, which has about a dozen nests. Each nesting pair can produce up to three young, Pope said.

Last year, a second nesting site appeared near the mouth of the Entiat River. And this year a third was built by herons near the Appleyard just south of Wenatchee. Nests have also been built at a fourth site near Earthquake Point, north of Entiat, but no birds are nesting there yet, Pope said.

The PUD added herons to the list of fish-eating birds it surveys each year after the birds' numbers appeared to be growing in the Rock Island and Rocky Reach dam reservoirs. The utility keeps tabs on birds that prey on salmon smolts in the reservoirs.

Last year, the surveyors counted an average of 25 blue herons a day in the two reservoirs in July and August. This year, the number jumped to 53 a day.

Thursday, Pope and two other PUD wildlife specialists counted 44 of the majestic birds along the shoreline. Most were standing still at the water's edge, hunting for food. One was perched on a basalt outcropping.

"Great blue!" they would call out when they spotted one of the birds.

While they are increasing along the Columbia, state biologists have seen fewer blue heron nests in other areas, such as Lake Wenatchee and Fish Lake, said Jon Gallie, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife in Wenatchee.

Because no agencies keep a close eye on the birds' populations throughout the region, no one knows if the population is increasing overall, or if they are moving around, he added.

But there is nothing to indicate that their habitat has been distributed, their food sources diminished or their predators are increasing all reasons for the birds to relocate, he said.

"We do know they are more visible in the Wenatchee area," he added.

Nationally, the great blue herons numbers have increased steadily in recent years, and they are now one of the most abundant wading birds in North America, according to the National Audubon Society.

The birds commonly nest and fish along the shores of open water and wetlands. They feed on small fish, frogs and salamanders, and generally stand alone and very still as they hunt.

They are found everywhere from high mountains lakes to small ponds in wheat fields in NCW, Gallie said. They typically stay away from people, though, and Gallie said he was surprised to hear that people were finding them in residential yards.

Pope said the PUD has received calls from valley residents whose ponds have been raided by the birds.

Randy Whited decided not to stock his backyard pond this year after a blue heron depleted it last year and the year before. He said the bird would usually show up in the early morning or late evening. It would fly away if it saw him, but then it would come back.

He said the bird "made the rounds" in the neighborhood on Valley View Boulevard in East Wenatchee, eating other people's fish, too. His neighbor put in a decoy plastic heron this year because the birds hunt alone and usually don't land where other herons are feeding.

"This year I didn't feed it, so he didn't come back," Whited said. "I thought they were great birds right up until they started eating on my fish. Now I just call them pests."

---

Information from: The Wenatchee World, http://www.wenatcheeworld.com