Farrar Pond invites some very large birds. Young, not-yet-bald eagles pass fairly regularly, scribing steady circles that drift with the wind, occasionally stooping for prey mainly in shallow water. Adult coloration seems increasingly common as well, among individuals both aloft and—less often—perching high above water’s edge. These are birds that prefer to stay close to the sky.
Only slightly smaller in span, and standing even taller as they wade, is the great blue heron. Competent flyers, but more ponderous than the eagle as they move from pond to pond in hunt or migration. And starting usually with feet at (or below) surface level, takeoffs seem almost as effortful as those of the strong but biomechanically marginal turkey. As with the massive mute swan, getting airborne entails an extended run, percussive flapping, and finally smoother lift after speed-gaining level flight in ground effect at about a wing’s-span above the surface. One is reminded of the sadly extinct SR-71 Blackbird, which needed refueling immediately after each takeoff to replenish its energy reserves from exhausting maneuver in an aerodynamic regime far from its high, thin and fast optimum. The sea-eagle that feeds on wing and at speed, and soars in between; the swan that paddles about in its vegetable soup; the wading frog-spear: like reef fish, each body plan is optimized for efficiency in the regimes in which it expends the greatest energy and the most time. The aquatics fly well but do not soar; the raptor is ungainly afoot, an occasional toe-dipper but no swimmer.
It is perhaps natural, then, though not so often seen, that a heron might wish to pause on the way between pond below and cloud above, as did this one
that made one long, slow spiral turn a good hundred feet from shallows to top of a pond-edge pine, looked around for a few minutes—seeking travel companions, testing breezes, resting muscles?—
then lofted again: without apparent effort, aided by a good headwind
and headed southwest, perhaps to an assignation at Sherman’s Bridge.