Pond owners unintentionally providing garden picnics
Fish fanciers cry ‘foul!’ as herons dine out
Debbie Speicher once had a beautiful ornamental pond in her backyard that was filled with fish. There were shiny, orange goldfish. There were bright red comets and large multicolored koi.
Everyone was happy there. Some of the fish had lived in the 750-gallon Amherst pond for nearly 10 years.
But one day this summer, Speicher noticed that some of her fish were gone. She went from having 22 fish to having two. She had no idea what became of the others.
Then, one morning last month, she got her answer.
In the middle of her garden pond, a great blue heron was hunting. He had just swallowed her last two fish.
“This guy looked like a small airplane taking off,” Speicher said.
This sad-but-true tale isn’t original. Similar stories have been told for as long as homeowners have been cultivating water gardens. But pond installers and water garden retailers say these hungry heron stories are signs of a growing, big bird bother plaguing suburbs and city.
“I think every year it’s getting worse,” said Jake Mang, store manager at The Fish Place, a popular retailer that sells fish, ponds, plants and other accessories for water gardens.
This summer, he said, he has seen roughly a customer a day complaining about the bird.
He used to joke that his store raised herons on the roof and had the birds follow his customers home so patrons would be forced to buy more fish.
“I don’t kid around anymore,” he said. “People get upset.”
Many theories exist as to why the heron problem seems increasingly widespread, and just as many suggestions exist as to how to deal with them.
The adult great blue heron is a large, wading hunter with a 6- foot wingspan. They live primarily on fish, though they eat other small critters, too, and are becoming increasingly notorious for clearing out backyard ponds in a single visit.
When homeowners place bright-colored fish in a small and open shallow pool, they’re practically hanging out McDonald’s golden arches as far as herons are concerned.
“The fish have no place to go, so for the heron — an incredible predator of fish with a lot of time on his hands — it’s like shooting fish in a barrel,” said Joel Thomas, who routinely answers “disappearing fish” calls as wildlife administrator for the Erie County SPCA.
A single visit by this bird often means hundreds of dollars worth of fish down the hatch. In some cases, owners have lost fish they’ve cared for and even hand-fed for many years.
Amherst resident Judi Moran, who lives in the Willow Ridge neighborhood, has a 120- gallon pond in her backyard. She was devastated when a heron swallowed six of her nine fantails in early July. Two others died of shock or injury.
She had cared for them for eight or nine years, she said. Her grandchildren named them all.
“I don’t really love fish, but I cried,” Moran said. “I couldn’t eat at a fish fry for a whole month.”
While herons typically nest in colonies far from urban areas, once nesting season is over — typically by early July — the birds scatter and establish new hunting grounds, said Connie Adams, senior wildlife biologist at the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Young birds still refining their hunting skills are most likely to pick off an easy meal from someone’s backyard, she added.
That includes cities, as former Erie County Republican Party Chairman Victor Farley learned the hard way.
Farley lives on Oakland Place near Women and Children’s Hospital in Buffalo. He was getting ready for a cocktail party in late June and went out to his pond to check on his eight fish. All were missing.
Like many perplexed pond keepers he thought someone had stolen them.
Then a friend at the party said a blue heron was probably to blame. At first, he said, the idea of a giant predator swooping down on a small city lot for a snack seemed silly.
But as the party wound down, a heron landed in one of his trees. “It looked like a dinosaur,” he said.
Most homeowners marvel at the bird’s size and beauty — until it starts eating.
Farley said he had spent about $80 on each of his 8-inch koi. One fish managed to survive the attack. But the heron still enjoyed a five-star meal.
“It was right up there with kobe beef,” he said.
Garden pond and wildlife experts offer several theories why herons are a nuisance for pond keepers. First, there’s the popularity of “water gardens,” which took off in the last 10 to 15 years, retailers said. As people have installed ponds, herons have learned to keep an eye out for these new food sources.
In addition, tougher laws regarding wetlands protection, clean water and flooding prevention have actually led to the creation of new habitats and ponds for water birds.
Finally, the heron population has grown modestly in the last few decades. Though it is not an endangered species, it is protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Adams said.
That doesn’t mean ornamental pond keepers can’t employ some tactics, from heron decoys and netting to rimming a pond with fishing line or employing a high-tech motion detecting sprinkler.
“You can frustrate them,” Thomas said, “but you can’t harm them.”
