Words and Photos by Beth Marlin Lichter
Eighty-four and one-half miles of the Rogue River are under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management’s National Conservation Lands. In 1968, this segment of the river became one of the first designated “Wild and Scenic Rivers” in America. Running its course for two hundred and fifteen miles, the Rogue borders forests, flows through dramatic canyons with rapids and meanders through wetlands until it reaches the Pacific Ocean at Gold Beach, Oregon. The unusual source of the river can be accessed by a trail near Crater Lake, destination being the waterfall spewing out of Boundary Springs. This is where the Rogue begins, a fountain of groundwater emanating from deep within the Cascade Mountains.
Driving inland from Gold Beach, the river is expansive and pristine, providing habitat and food for wildlife, perfect for raising a family, buzzing with activity which I stopped to observe on my way to a small cabin by a gravel bar, eight miles upstream on a bend of the river.
Arriving at the cabin early evening, I brought in my groceries and suitcase and then immediately walked down the sloping lawn to the river, where I heard strange but yet familiar clacking sounds coming from the woods on the opposite side. Then with binoculars up, to my great surprise and delight I surveyed a riverbank lined with tall trees harboring nest after nest of Great Blue Herons and their young. It was like looking into an apartment building without walls, each nesting family going about its summertime business in plain sight.
For the next five days I went out the back door at dawn, wearing pjs, puffer jacket and beanie and attempted to capture the comings and goings of adult herons still feeding their fledglings, spearing fish in the river and bringing them back to nests, greeted by raucous demands for food.
I watched awkward fledglings clumsily hop from limb to limb and when an open space appeared, they flapped their wings, flew a few feet and then hurried back to the nest to beg for food.
The nests themselves are piles of long sticks arranged platform-style and they are high up in the trees. When an adult heads back to the nest, hopefully with food to feed the family, all juvenile herons in the rookery start yelling for some of their own. It’s a sound like no other, a cross between what the prototype of an early industrial machine might have sounded like, and a duck with laryngitis.
There is a little footbridge over Redtail Lake, at Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge, where in 2018 and 2019 I spent many happy hours observing the heron rookery nearby. Then a restoration project changed the hydrology of the refuge and the lake became mostly dry. It was a magical spot not only for birdwatching, but for connecting with people. You’d be standing on the bridge having a conversation with another birder about what you have each seen that morning, when a Great Blue nearly grazes your head with a swoosh of wings and a gentle, graceful settling onto the water, landing at a favorite fishing spot along the shore. I thought I’d never see that again, hence the great joy in finding a thriving rookery on a little bend in the Rogue River near Gold Beach.
In addition to the normal chaos of parenting and protecting the young, there was a heightened level of tension surrounding the location of an active Osprey nest, just a few feet down the shoreline from the rookery. The adult Ospreys were engaged in constant procurement of fish to feed their two nestlings. They could have chosen direct routes from nest to river, but often came stealthily cruising through the dense foliage of the rookery, flying below, above, a wing’s flutter away from herons and nests and when they breezed through, all eyes turned towards the raptor and silence prevailed. Fear? Awe? Admiration? Once the Osprey was out of sight, the cacophonous chatter resumed.
I think there were about twenty-two herons in the rookery. With nests at different heights and all the feeding going on, first time fliers and siblings vying for attention, this community was endlessly fascinating to observe.
Click Here and Scroll Down the Page to Hear: Juvenile Great Blue Heron Sounds