This has been an action packed week for me, it’s the one year anniversary of the Minneapolis Tornado that ripped through a great blue heron rookery, destroying all the nests and displaying most of the adults. The herons ended up renesting, some at an older rookery at Coon Rapids Dam and then other establishing a [ Read More ]
I love all the live nest cams that are available for us to watch online but knowing all the things that can go wrong with nesting, I keep waiting for the day when a nest cam witnesses something violent. Sure, we’ve had epic peregrine battles, but when we are we going to see something pick [ Read More ]
I almost peed my pants watching this video this morning. It is HIGHlarious! Stick with it, things get interesting at the 20 second mark and end up amazing at the end. Herons are awesome and kudos to my buddy Clay Taylor for an excellent capture of this behavior. And that’s a young heron finessing its [ Read More ]
Well the big theme story in the blog this summer was the tornado ravaged great blue herons. Their rookery was blown away in May and some birds attempted to re-nest at Coon Rapids Dam and Marshall Terrace Park. I headed out last week to Marshall Terrace to see if chicks were visible. I had heard [ Read More ]
Photo by Brian Peterson. Hello all, NBB here. The StarTribune has a story about the final two heron chicks that were rescued after a tornado destroyed their rookery on the Mississippi River. Sharon’s been involved with this story as one of the first people to investigate the damage, to being part of the rescue team, [ Read More ]
If you’ve been following this blog this summer, you are aware of the tornado that hit Minneapolis in May and destroyed a heron rookery and the recovery and rebuilding. I got a call from the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center that last week and they planned to release 7 of the 9 great blue heron chicks recovered [ Read More ]
Not long after the North Mississipppi heron rookery was destroyed, there was talk of building an artificial rookery to get them to come back. Now that the herons seemed to have settled on other islands, the situation isn’t as dire–they found plenty other nesting opportunities. However, if an area is missing good nesting sites for [ Read More ]
Who knew this story would have such legs?! As reported last month, the great blue heron rookery at North Mississippi Regional Park was completely obliterated by a tornado that went through north Minneapolis. I worked with some of my fellow National Park Rangers at MNRRA, the MN DNR and the Animal Humane Society to help [ Read More ]
The great blue heron rookery is easily visible now in North Mississippi Regional Park. I had to give a program there on Saturday afternoon and the nest building birds were a treat to watch. The trees haven’t leafed out yet and so you can make out which nests are still under construction and which already [ Read More ]
I had to take a local film crew to North Mississippi Regional Park again to see the heron rookerly. Since leaf out is so early (this is the first time since I’ve lived in Minnesota that I have seen lilacs blooming in April) I was curious how much of the rookery was still visible. Here’s [ Read More ]
