Waiting for my dad to finish his conversation at the local coffee shop in San Anselmo, I would walk to the foot bridge and stare at that small stream below. On rare occasions I’d see, standing nearly motionless, a black-crowned night heron peering into the water. Their blue-black heads, like a small cap resting just above their red eyes, white bodies, and their piercing beak, made these birds seem like the quiet hidden spirits of my hometown.
Night herons are birds native to almost all of the Americas, spanning from the southern tip of Argentina, to just over the border into Canada. You can see them at the edge of the water, often in marshes, standing just as I saw them as a child: still, peering into the water, waiting patiently for their next meal, usually a fish, to pass by.
At least, that’s true across most of the areas they call home. In Oakland, however, on the banks of Lake Merritt and downtown, you can see them looking into trash cans, dumpsters, or lounging atop streetlights and awnings, acting more like unruly crows or pigeons in the city. Effectively in Oakland, these stoic marsh birds have turned into urban dwellers. While they can be seen at times in other cities, they nest in Oakland near the Oakland Museum of Art and so have made the city their home.
Oakland-based writer Jenny Odell referred to them as a ghost of the city’s past, a remnant of the marsh that once consumed what is now Lake Merritt, downtown, and the Grand Lake neighborhood that was dredged for the development of the city. Like the California live oaks, night herons have become synonymous with the city of Oakland. Moving here I still thought of them as those quiet hunters of my childhood. To first see them hopping on telephone lines and scavenging for food scraps was at first perplexing, but as my time here has grown, I have come to see the Oakland night herons as Odell sees them, a reminder of a past that can possibly withstand unsettling amounts of change.
Cole Hersey is a writer based in Oakland, California. His work focuses on environmental topics and the arts. His work has been featured in Bay Nature, Earth Island Journal, and elsewhere.
