Destruction of Herons by a Hail-Storm
Destruction of Herons by a Hail-storm
The following brief item is from the Lyons, Colorado, Recorder of July 18, 1907:
“The cranes’ resort, three miles east of Lyons, was broken up by the recent hail-storm. The ground under the trees is covered with dead birds.”
The item refers to the Great Blue Heron, the mistake in nomenclature having been since corrected by the paper at my suggestion. The St. Vrain colony, near Lyons, where the disaster occurred, is a well-known and interesting heronry. These birds, in the northern Colorado colonies, on account of their habit of nesting in the tops of the trees above protecting branches, and the severity of occasional hail-storms, are very liable to destruction. In perusing the notebooks of Denis Gale I noticed that, in 1890, he found many nests in this same colony destroyed by heavy winds, nnd that he found buzzards nesting in the same trees with the herons.
JUNIUS HENDERSON
Boulder, Colorado
