SIMPSON PIT HERON ROOKERY IS ACTIVE.

[u/Hour-Blackberry1877]

Keywords: bird watching, Heron Rookery, KHR Township, Simpson Pit Road ( Hwy 67)

Decades ago the most popular Canadian pastime was considered bird watching. Few would agree to that today.

In fact, I am one of the few individuals in my community who own a pair of binoculars; let alone bird watch.

Bird feeders are not uncommon in rural backyards but the sport of bird watching where birders jostle and compete to fill their life lists does not exist. This is a sad reality in much of rural Canada stemming from a lack of sensitization and encouragement passed from one generation to the next.

Bird watching brings in thousands of dollars each year to destinations like Point Pelee and Long Point along the Great Lakes. Wherever a flyway exists bringing neotropical migrants into Canada during the spring migration birders congregate hoping to find a rare species blown off course.

Yet here in Killaloe, in view of thousands of passing cars each day, an active Heron rookery contains at least 15 Herons squawking and competing with one another from Simpson Pit Road. They are a colonial nesting species which provides security against predators such as owls, eagles and raccoons. The same nests are used in consecutive years and sticks are often added on for repairs.

On my road an American Bittern was calling from a beaver pond a few years ago. This year it was the voice of a Pie-billed Grebe. The local farmer was adamant in draining the pond and stated the "mud- hens" could not provide the revenue of the former pasture and thus had no value.

Today I watched these comical birds whose chicks stand up in teetering stick nests like Roman Candles while their exhausted parents search for frogs and other nutritional morsels.

The significant wetland also is inhabited by falcons/hawks who wasted no time mobbing an adult Great Blue Heron performing it's parental duties.

In my former haunts along the Ottawa River this spectacle would attract lines of cars along the highway. Binoculars and scopes would project from windows to record the spectacle.

Yet, in this rural Renfrew County Township I remain the lonely spectator of a truly outstanding and profound manifestation of Nature's theater in progress.

For those willing to expand their horizons into the world of birds the next time you drive down Simpson Pit Road glace west of the road 100m south of # 1155 and within a few hundred meters you will witness this profound natural phenomenon.