Great Blue Heron Sighted Tailgating on Campus

Around 2 pm today, while tailgaters were beginning to assemble for the Notre Dame night game, a great blue heron was spotted fishing in a rapid on the Red Cedar River, at the corner of Michigan and Harrison, by the Kellogg Center. I saw it catch a gulp-sized fish (with larger fish, herons have to turn them around in their bills, which is fun to watch). This is the first time I have seen a heron on campus since May, I presume because of the heat and the low water level in the river. Most years, I make frequent heron sightings from May through September.

The most common place for campus heron sightings is on either side of the river just below the falls (near the Administration Building), especially in the evening, although I have often seen one there midday or even on football Saturdays in September, with crowds filling the sidewalk just above, and the band playing nearby. Other places to look are at the slight rapid by Beal Garden and behind Kellogg. Occasionally it will fly from one side of the falls to the other or to find somewhere better, perhaps because even a campus heron has limited tolerance. A heron in flight is impressive, especially close up—I once had one fly within feet of me, as I was walking under the Bogue Street Bridge into Sanford Natural area.

A favorite part of campus wildlife observations is to stand there for minutes watching heron, hawk, muskrat, mink, salmon, or other fauna, and see how many people will pass by without bothering to look for at what we are staring. Today, nobody paid me the slightest notice. I am happy to report, however, that there have been many times I have been alerted to wildlife by MSU students, usually wanting to know what something is (most frequently the ubiquitous woodchucks that drive the grounds crews batty). I will never cease to be amazed by college students' fascination with squirrels, and not just with our unusual black variety of gray squirrel (according to one version of the legend, imported from Battle Creek by John Hannah, who also longed for Canada Geese on campus—thanks!). But then, again, we have long since given up trying not to feed the squirrels, after one expensive squirrel-proof bird feeder was contemptuously eaten.

Photo credit: Eliot Singer