We've been seeing and posting lots of water birds and birds of prey lately, which reminded me of an encounter I had last fall with a great blue heron.   While rowing last October and November, one of the usually reticent lake bank birds took to buzzing the stern of my single each time I was out, squawking incredibly loudly (which doesn't need to be slowed down to sound like a dinosaur).  The birds typically avoid coming too close to any rowing shells, but in these instances were about a boat length off the stern, and maybe six to eight feet off the water.  

This happened four or five times, which got me wondering; how did the bird perceive a person in a boat – did they see me as, well, a person in a boat?  Or perhaps not as a person at all, but as a giant water-walking creature?    If I had been in an eight, would it have seen us as nine people in an eight?  Or a nine-headed relative of the giant water-walking creature?

I wrote the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which I knew about from the Merlin Bird ID app they offer.    (As it goes, I learned about the app from a bird photographer who emerged from the marshes at Mercer Lake and wanted to compare our camera equipment, and who also subsequently shared the app that helped him identify and even attract the attention of the local birds.)

I wrote to ask if they might be available to answer some questions, and received an auto-response that they don't have resources to answer all emails; however, a few days later a second reply arrived, from Marc Devokaitis, Public Information Specialist at the lab: "Some days you never know what you'll find in the inbox.  Feel free to send your questions via email."  I did, and here is what he had to say.

row2k: When the blue herons are perched alongside the lake, are they attempting camouflage?

Marc Devokaitis: They are hunting, or resting.  Herons are naturally camouflaged in marshy areas with ample reedy vegetation - not so much on the banks of a lake, unless it is a reedy bank.

row2k: What might have been going on with this/these birds buzzing me last fall?

Marc Devokaitis: They might have just been curious - or they might have thought that your craft would stir up some potential food.

row2k: Finally, the thing that I thought might be most interesting: does a blue heron (and other birds) perceive a person in a sculling boat as a human in a sculling boat (or craft of some kind)?  Or does it perceive the sculler as another species entirely (a giant water-walking creature or even winged animal or bird for example)?  What about two-, four-, and eight-person boats?  Is each perceived as some new species?  Or is it just 2/4/8 humans in a craft?

Marc Devokaitis: I don’t know that we have probed the Great Blue Herons cognitive functioning to the degree that we could answer this question.  See #1 – a person in a boat becomes a different creature than a human not in a boat.  I'm sure that herons can perceive a difference in the different boats you mentioned, but what that difference means to them, I don’t think we can say.

It turns out we are a bit too bird-brained just yet to know what goes on inside a bird's brain; nonetheless, we hope you have a good outing next time you head out, large water-walking creatures.