Boolie’s Blog

This is a re-edit of a picture that’s already been online for years, taken in the first week of January of 2001. In fact, it was one of my earliest pictures from when I switched to digital in Christmas of 2000.

It was near sunset at Baskett Slough as I waited to see if black-tailed deer would emerge into the golden light, but none were forthcoming so I headed back to the car to try my luck at one of the ponds before the light slipped away. By the time I got there, I was disappointed to see that the direct light was already blocked from the pond and thought my chances of getting a good picture were over. Then I noticed this great blue heron against the brilliant orange reflection of the sunset and shot a whole sequence as he slowly moved around.

Townsend’s voles live in the fields at Ridgefield, and I suspect you could track the natural ebb and flow of their population by the number of hunters out looking for them. It isn’t just herons that work these fields, as egrets, hawks, owls, harriers, kestrels, and coyotes all feed on the voles and mice here.

This particular heron seemed to be rather lackadaisical in its hunting and I figured it wouldn’t catch anything. But I was in a quiet mood and enjoying watching it, so I decided to just sit still for a while. After making a few half-hearted stabs at the ground, it wandered into the taller grasses where it was mostly obscured as it hunted low to the ground.

Suddenly it froze and began wiggling its neck, so I knew it wasn’t just goofing around and got my camera ready. I was confronted with the classic problem, do I shoot the picture as a horizontal or a vertical? There’s no way of knowing the best composition ahead of time since you don’t know what the heron’s going to do when after it strikes, but I went for the vertical since if it stayed low it would be completely obscured by the grass.

The heron found its mark and popped up vertically before swallowing the little vole, and I love the way the taller grasses in front envelop the heron in a sea of green. I got lucky on that morning but can’t say the same for the unfortunate vole.

A great blue heron leaves its perch on a foggy and frosty morning back in February, just as the sun was about to rise over the hills.

“I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.” — Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: A New Hope

At the end of the auto tour at Ridgefield NWR lie what I’ve dubbed the killing fields: large meadows beside the sloughs and ponds where Townsend’s voles are hunted by predators of all kinds. Coyotes, red-tailed hawks, short-eared owls, northern harriers, American kestrels, great egrets, and their largest threat: the great blue heron. Some people might not think of herons and egrets as predators, but they are in fact excellent hunters.

I was surprised to see herons hunting in fields when we moved to Oregon — at the time I was only aware that they hunted fish. They’ll hunt for fish and frogs in the water, no question, but voles play a major role in their diet (in the Northwest at least).

On the day this picture was taken, I couldn’t help but feel a great deal of sympathy for the voles. A small army of herons was working the fields, and quite successfully at that. Most of the time the voles died quickly as the heron would spear them clean through with their large beaks. Sometimes though the heron doesn’t get such a clean hit and there’s a few seconds of squirming on the voles part, and sometimes even a high-pitched squeal. It’s the way of the natural world of course, and with a telephoto lens there’s no escaping the brutality of the event.

The vole population itself certainly isn’t under threat, they breed frequently and throughout the year and play a vital role in the ecosystem here. It’s just that even as I admired the patience and skill of the herons as they snared the voles and shook them about and flung them in mid-air to swallow them, I became acutely aware that several little lives were ending before my eyes — I must have a little Jedi blood in me after all.

Now to build my light sabre …