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Early morning portrait
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Early morning portrait

It had been two weeks since I was last here at Clove Lakes to get my first look at this years batch of chicks from our now famous pair of great blue herons. The pair nesting in the same tree, for by all accounts, at least the last 4 or 5 years, have attracted all kinds of attention from locals, news people, and professional photographers. I feel especially blessed to live so close to the lake that I can come whenever I have a free day off to check up on them.

My last trip here I noticed a pair of great egrets had been chased off of Martling lake (which is the second of the three lakes here at Clove lake park) by the female heron, and is where her nest is located, and forced the egrets to hunt for food on the first lake, from which the Park gets it's name.

And today as I entered the park as usual from Clove Road and headed towards the heron's nest I spotted this great white egret no doubt hunting here at Clove lake, the first lake instead of Martling lake, where it surely would have stirred the ire of our pair of herons.

As usually I find more people fishing on Martling lake compared to Clove lake, I can safely assume that the hunting decidedly better there on the second lake than the first. And undoubtedly the herons found that to be the case too, and are in no mood to share their good fortune with any direct rival looking to raise their own brood of chicks. And thus why the female vigorously chased them off the last time.

So much so that even though her mate had left the nest to hunt, she took off after the egret leaving the chicks unattended, though she probably wouldn't have gone completely out of sight of the nest like that if the chicks hadn't had grown so big by then.

Probably not in the mood to get hassled by our nesting pair this beautiful great white, stalked around here where it could hunt undisturbed. Which was good for me too, as in the early morning lighting it made for a very nice photo opportunity.

springStaten IslandClove LakesGreat white egretbirdsnatureegretsNYC

  • DSC_7105 coming in for a landing
  • DSC_7106 coming in for a landing
  • DSC_7107 coming in for a landing
  • This landing sequence was even better
  • DSC_7113 a fresh branch for the nest
  • DSC_7114 a fresh branch for the nest
  • DSC_7115 a fresh branch for the nest
  • DSC_7116 a fresh branch for the nest
  • DSC_7119 a fresh branch for the nest
  • DSC_7125 a fresh branch for the nest
  • Feeding time
  • DSC_7197 heron's nest
  • DSC_7207 heron's nest
  • DSC_7209 heron's nest
  • And so as this heron took off to find more food for the four young chicks, I too decided upon capturing this shot to take off as well. I had been here for 7 hours and had captured every remaining type of shot I had set out to do. And after failing to capture one clean shot of either parent taking off or landing on the nest in over 1000 shots spanning 13 months, today I captured over a half dozen. It seemed fitting that this one would be the shot the ended my day.
  • DSC_8654 morning glories
  • Early morning portrait
  • As I was able to sneak (and I use the term loosely, as there is no sneaking up on a bird, if you see them they already saw you) a tad under 50ft from this Egret I was just at the very edge of decent image quality from my 70-300mm nikkor. Any further out and the shots would have been so soft and un-detailed they would have looked like crap, and un-editable. Which is why I kept slowly working my way behind closer and closer bushes until I got into decent picture quality range. <br /> <br /> If not I would have held back and used by 300mm nikkor. That lens takes great pictures at all distances, but is manual focus, and since it is 30 years old, also has no vibration reduction, which means I would have had to pull out my tripod, and this fellow was moving too much to try that, so sneaking up with something I could hand hold was the way to go. <br /> <br /> When I finally can afford a high quality super zoom, and a camera body with a sensor sensitive enough to operate in conjunction with it, my life will be so much easier. But for now, gotta work with what I got.
  • It's been 2 weeks since I last came here to Clove Lakes to check up on the nest and see how the 4 chicks are doing. Nice to see they are all growing quite big, and are all bright eyed and bushy tailed. Well all except the sleepy looking one here with its eyes closed. But much more on that fellow in the shots that follow.<br /> <br /> It's amazing how fast they've grown in just 2 weeks. The chicks are already now bigger than most of the adult avian visitors to the lake, the variety of which is numerous, from tiny sparrows to ospreys and great whites. When they reach adulthood they would be the king or queen of this lake predator wise. Not only are they major fisherman, great blue herons will hunt small mammals too. One of my friends showed me a video where a heron speared and gobbled up an adult squirrel, as easy as we'd gobble down a bon bon.<br /> <br /> So here as an adult they'd run this lake as top predator. That is if they were allowed to stay, but highly likely they won't. Their now attentive parents will not tolerate their presence here come next spring if, instead of striking out on their own, they decide they really like it here and don't want to leave.<br /> <br /> As a regular visitor to this well known nest with my elaborate camera set up, I've garnered a pretty good following from the locals. They've shared lots of observations. And several mentioned how they saw quite a fight early this spring when one of last year's chicks, now fully grown didn't want to leave the lake, or nest for that matter, and then one of the parents got into a huge pecking and wing beating fight, and chased it off the lake, never to return.<br /> <br /> But that potential scenario is still many months away for any of this brood. For now all they have to do is sit back in their open air apartment with the lakeside view, and wait for mom and dad to bring back their latest regurgitated fancy feast, which turns out will be just about an hour from now. And my camera is all set up and ready to record it.
  • This picture is as good of an overall example of the state of the four siblings as I took all morning. Here all four chicks are clearly present, while both adults were off hunting. When they were smaller I noticed one or other of the parents would always be in the nest. And even on my last visit while the chicks were getting big and the parents both left the nest at the same time, one most of the time hunted almost directly below the nest (There are fish all over this lake, and a favored spot of people who fish here is not all that far up from the nest spot - though of course the nest is safely 30 ft or more above the ground). And sometimes one adult would hunt across on the other shore directly opposite from the nest but within easy view of it.<br /> <br /> But now with the chicks growing quite big, I often went hours without seeing hide nor hair of either parent, as they fished far and wide to feed their ravenous children. But all was not as right as I thought with all of the kiddies.<br /> <br /> The chicks could probably be broken into 3 general levels of health. The first one would belong to the chick flapping it's wings in this shot. Eager active, first to jump at the sight of a parent bringing food, most aggressive trying to be fed. Testing out its wings while standing in the nest or a tall branch.<br /> <br /> The second group would belong to the two siblings under the first one's neck. Not quite as aggressive or active but not quiet and docile either. Now it is certainly possible that all three birds in these first two groupings took turns in my eyes being in one or the other group. After all they all look alike. The only thing I can say is that one chick was almost always more alert and more aggressive when feeding time rolled around than the other two. So it seems odd that I didn't record instances when all three were equally aggressive, or all three equally unaggressive at feeding time, or two aggressive and one more docile. So that's why I lean on the idea that one particular one was always more active and aggressive than the other two.<br /> <br /> The third group belonged to the chick at its feet. With this one there is no doubt. Quite often stationery, and most noticeably, only half the size of it's 3 siblings, something was definitely wrong with this one, but I never clued in on it's stunted size or actions until I carefully looked at the images in my photo editor at home much later, and by then it was too late for me to pay close attention to the doomed chick.<br /> <br /> How I didn't notice at least some of this while photographing the nest that day is beyond me. (Shows you how good a nature photographer I am!) It was not until I was editing these shots weeks later that I came to realize what was going on with this 4th and least fortunate chick. Looking at the nest at the time of this shot I simply assumed that the chick at the feet of its more active sibling simply had its eyes closed. But actually if you look closely you can see that the eye is not closed, its missing.<br /> <br /> If you look at the previous shot to this one you can see this a little better. And you can even see what looks like some kind of scar in front of the eye. When I eventually carefully reviewed this days shoot I thought it odd that all the shots I took of the chicks head when it faced left, I missed getting his eyes open, while all the ones on his right I didn't. That's when I released the eye must be closed due to illness or injury. Then I examined the shots more closely and determined the eye was missing completely. And of course then I knew this chick was in trouble.<br /> <br /> On my next visit to the nest in a few weeks I noticed with out doubt that there was only three chicks in the nest now instead of four, and told that to all the curious onlookers and well wishers. We all wondered what happened to the 4th, if maybe it flew away unexpectedly early - which sounded highly unlikely. But still days away from editing today's shots I couldn't offer a good explanation as to what happened to it.<br /> <br /> As I edited these shots and started to see that it was not long for this world, I wished I had noticed this at the time, so I could have recorded it's demise for the record. Turns out today was the day that was it's last day alive in the nest and I even had a time frame for when this event had to take place.
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