100 Birds – #6

Commonwealth Lake Park is a heavily used urban park in Beaverton, Oregon.  The park is about 3 miles from our old house and sits in one of the most densely populated portions of Oregon. There is a paved path around the pond and the area is accessible all year.  I made a habit of walking the 0.75-mile long path as much as I could.  I’d almost always walk around 2 or 3 times- sometimes as many as 6 laps if the interest was high. The park almost always provided an interesting bird sighting or two.

Green Heron is football sized birds that are seen mostly as a compact form standing or walking along a rocky shore foraging for food.  Infrequently you will see them with their necks extended or in flight. They eat fish, frogs, salamanders, and insects.  Like most herons, the Green Heron will stand still for long periods of time as it scans the water for movement.  It will approach slowly and cautiously until it is within striking range.  Then, in true heron form, it will extend its neck forward and prepare to strike.  When it makes the decisive move it is very quick and most often successful.  An observer will likely be rewarded with a long period of calm punctuated by a very brief moment of explosive energy and then, depending on the prey, a few moments of orienting the catch and ingesting it.

We try to visit Commonwealth Lake Park when we visit Portland from Wenatchee.  Our recent visits confirm that the park managers are keeping the lake level high.  They started doing this before we moved to Washington and the levels do not appear to have dropped since. While I have not had the same luxury of frequent, lengthy visits to the area it seems that the Green heron are gone.  I suspect that the high water levels, submerging the shoreline rocks, have eliminated the foraging habitat for the herons. I could be wrong due to my limited exposure to the lake now.  I hope I am since these birds are often sighted by visitors and, being so unique, give them a thrill and a sense of mystery.

I’ve spent hours sitting on the lakeshore rocks with a camera watching these birds.  At times there have been as many as 3 Green herons at Commonwealth so there is variation both in location and within the birds.  It is, for me, a great deal of fun to sit and watch.  I enjoy predicting the bird’s next move and studying its behavior.  Sitting like that – calmly, patiently – is good for my soul. I appreciate that I had the time and ability to spend so much time with these birds and look forward to more time with them when possible.