An adult green heron feeds two chicks in Prospect Park
The green herons nesting in Prospect Park stuck it out through the huge and hated Googa Mooga festival and now are feeding two chicks.
I saw one parent wake up the chicks with a meal–a fish, I think–and then lured them out on a branch to get fed. The chicks jostled past each other, so awkward I was amazed they didn’t fall. The parent (it could be either since the dads stay involved) then regurgitated a mean right into the throat of the babies.
According to Birdweb, the birds start walking out on nearby limbs at about 16 days, then fledge a week later and still get help from their parents for about another week. If they did hatch just over two weeks ago, that means the parents had to endure the obnoxious sound system just a couple days before the eggs hatched.
I had thought that the festival had driven off the birds, which normally have two to six eggs, because I didn’t see a heron on the nest after GoogaMooga ended on May 18. I’m happy to be wrong about the birds surviving.
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