Green Heron love?

I thought that, after the thunderstorms and the passage of the front last night, it would be much cooler this morning but it was in fact still very hot and humid with a lot of wet, sticky vegetation and lots of attack insects both in and around the marsh and in the woods. And, not surprisingly, the swallows were out with at least one Bank Swallow flying with the Barn Swallows as it has almost every morning. I got a good look at him today and could see the smaller size, compact build, brown back and -- the clincher -- clearly marked breast band. This bird is a fast, agile swallow, almost as good a flyer as the Barn Swallows it seems to like to hang out with. Might there still be a few pairs hanging on in the East Coast Mines sand mining operation north of East Quogue?

In the pond on my arrival this morning were the two Mute Swans with their four cygnets dipping deep into the water (the tide was quite high). In recent days, there has been a substantial growth of algae in the pond and this is apparently what the swans were ingesting. These swans are tamefowl and they didn't mind my presence at all. They were accompanied by two somewhat more wary Mallards (both males; the male-female pair seems to have split up) and a Snowy Egret (very wary; it promptly took off).

The bird in the "on guard" position in the dead cedar on the far bank -- occupied in recent days by a Willet -- was, surprise, a Green Heron. And, somewhere in the nearby woods, there was the sound of a Green Heron gulping -- the soft growling, repeated 'gulp' that I have been hearing almost every day for the past couple of weeks. The Green Heron on the dead cedar at first seemed to pay no attention and then suddenly it let out a loud, sharp "SKEE-ow" -- the typical sound that one associates with this bird. After a few more gulps, it became obvious that the bird by the pond was responding to the bird in the woods -- not to every single 'gulp' but every third or fourth repetition. Suddenly the gulping bird appeared out of the woods and flew right over the pond and, followed now by the skeeowing bird, flew into the woods on the other side. Green Heron love? I certainly hope so.

Eric Salzman