{"id":38594,"date":"2026-04-03T03:53:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T10:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/?p=38594"},"modified":"2026-04-08T03:59:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T10:59:04","slug":"flowers-and-missing-herons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/?p=38594","title":{"rendered":"Flowers and Missing Herons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thursday was a cold rainy morning with promised sun in the afternoon. A good time to hoof it around Pre’s Trail and Alton Baker Park<\/a> to check on the nesting herons<\/a>. Started around 11:30 and returned by 3:00. Wore wind-shell the entire time and used an umbrella once. That promised sun was just one of the micro-climates that rolled across the valley; it went from cold wet to hot sunny within 10 minutes several times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surprisingly, most of the herons are gone … literally not there. From Autzen to the boat ramp on Pres Trail, I saw 3 herons, and the last time there were more than 10. The new nests were abandoned, and the old nest area had 1 nest with residents. Very strange … the nests in Alton Baker Park were still abandoned. These were the only nesting pair seen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Other birds were everywhere and almost all were in pairs – must be spring… The wood ducks were all decked-out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The flowers didn’t hold back either<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The mystery of the missing herons needs a follow up with the Parks and even Oregon Fish & Wildlife. One scenario is that all the resident, non-migrating geese shared their Bird Flu with the Herons. Herons seem to be way more at risk from the Flu and geese can carry without symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another day to remind us that walking out the door and just ‘looking’ can be a wonderful experience!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday was a cold rainy morning with promised sun in the afternoon. A good time to hoof it around Pre’s Trail and Alton Baker Park to check on the nesting herons. Started around 11:30 and returned by 3:00. Wore wind-shell the entire time and used an umbrella once. That promised sun was just one of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[90,84,91],"class_list":["post-38594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-around-town","category-photo-chasing","tag-flower","tag-herons","tag-wood-ducks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/goatbells.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/P4021984.jpg?fit=2048%2C1536&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38594"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38606,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38594\/revisions\/38606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}