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Today is the 4th of July and as I never work paid holidays (of which we get few), I was off. So I chose to use it to go back out and check in on our famous family of herons out at the lake (famous to the regular visitors of Clove Lake that is).<br />
<br />
Now I was still 2 weeks away from editing the shots that I took on my last visit to the nest sight on the 20th of last month, so as of yet I still hadn't realized that one of the 4 chicks had died. Nor did I have any knowledge that by visiting the nest on the 20th I had inadvertently picked the day that the doomed chick actually fell out of the nest (probably weak from hunger). And had at the very least recorded a visual record of the time frame for its death.<br />
<br />
But as of now I was oblivious to all that, and assumed all 4 chicks were alive, but I noticed only 3 in the nest. As the leaves around the nest had grown quite dense over the last few months and that it was a big nest, I surmised it was certainly possible that the 4th chick was laying low under cover. And after a few hours of still only seeing 3 started wondering if the 4th one had flown away. Though that seemed highly unlikely, as big as they had become, none of the chicks should have been big enough to fly yet.<br />
<br />
So when the many regulars stopped to ask me how they were doing and how many chicks I saw, I told them they were all well and growing quite big, but that for some reason there was almost certainly now just 3 in the nest, and only speculated about what happened to the 4th. Who knew at the time my camera had recorded the answer to the missing 4th chick, and was just waiting for me to edit the shots to reveal the answer.<br />
<br />
In the mean time the 3 that remained all looked in great shape and were all active and alert, and looked like they would be leaving the nest to explore the lake soon, awesome!

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Today is the 4th of July and as I never work paid holidays (of which we get few), I was off. So I chose to use it to go back out and check in on our famous family of herons out at the lake (famous to the regular visitors of Clove Lake that is).

Now I was still 2 weeks away from editing the shots that I took on my last visit to the nest sight on the 20th of last month, so as of yet I still hadn't realized that one of the 4 chicks had died. Nor did I have any knowledge that by visiting the nest on the 20th I had inadvertently picked the day that the doomed chick actually fell out of the nest (probably weak from hunger). And had at the very least recorded a visual record of the time frame for its death.

But as of now I was oblivious to all that, and assumed all 4 chicks were alive, but I noticed only 3 in the nest. As the leaves around the nest had grown quite dense over the last few months and that it was a big nest, I surmised it was certainly possible that the 4th chick was laying low under cover. And after a few hours of still only seeing 3 started wondering if the 4th one had flown away. Though that seemed highly unlikely, as big as they had become, none of the chicks should have been big enough to fly yet.

So when the many regulars stopped to ask me how they were doing and how many chicks I saw, I told them they were all well and growing quite big, but that for some reason there was almost certainly now just 3 in the nest, and only speculated about what happened to the 4th. Who knew at the time my camera had recorded the answer to the missing 4th chick, and was just waiting for me to edit the shots to reveal the answer.

In the mean time the 3 that remained all looked in great shape and were all active and alert, and looked like they would be leaving the nest to explore the lake soon, awesome!

summer Staten Island Clove Lakes Great blue heron birds nature herons NYC