My Blue Herons

Every January, the Great Blue Herons of Golden Gate Park return to one of the little islands in Stow Lake to build a nest. And close on their heels – if, that is, they had heels – is the Heron Lady of Golden Gate Park, Nancy DeStefanis.

Nancy DeStefanis and her mascot

For more than 20 years, DeStefanis has made it her business to introduce and educate the public about these majestic birds. On Saturdays in April and May, she and her small crew of volunteers run the Heron Watch where the public can view the nests through spotting scopes and get answers to any and all heron-related questions. 

Last Saturday De Stefanis was at her usual station on the northeast side of the lake, across from the island where two pairs of herons had established nests, hailing every person passing by. “Have you seen the birds?” she called in her thick Brooklyn accent. “Come see the birds.” Some had no idea what she was talking about – Birds? What birds? Where? Others arrived with their own binoculars or cameras outfitted with lenses a mile long.

Herons are to be found all over the city. I’ve seen them in golf courses and soccer fields, on median strips and in ponds, standing still as statues as they hunt their prey, which might be a gopher or mole or mouse and fish. (Fun heron fact: Those razor sharp beaks can stab a target at 90 mph.). Though there are a few other heronries in the city (at Lake Merced and off Yacht Road in the Marina) the ones at Stow Lake are the most accessible and where the birds are most easily seen.

 A collective “wow” went up from the small crowd when one of the great birds glided overhead and lit on the branch of a Monterey pine, next to its nest. The branch scarcely bowed. Great Blue Herons are huge, standing more than four feet tall with a six foot wing span, but their bones are hollow so they weigh about as much as two sourdough loaves from Tartine.

The bird poked its long beak into the nest, possibly to turn the eggs. Then it stepped into the nest, folded its long legs and settled down, mostly disappearing from view.

It wasn’t clear yet whether any of the eggs in those nests had hatched. But DeStefanis had already spotted three chicks in the nest on the other side of the lake, in the island by the boathouse. She named the first one Marty, after one of her longtime volunteers, the other two Kyle and Margaret for her supporters. They’ll stay in the nest, fed by both parents, until they’re ten or 12 weeks old and ready to fledge.

Chicks in Monterey Pine tree. Photo by Ian Reid. Courtesy of San Francisco Nature Education

DeStefanis’s love affair with the birds began 30 years ago. She was taking one of her daily walks around Stow Lake. “I looked up and I saw this humongous bird flapping and flying in and then two chicks stood up and they were enormous.” A casual birder, she knew enough to realize she’d found a nest. At the time no one knew that herons were nesting in the park. She kept her eye on the spot and sure enough, the following year nesting herons returned.

She’d worked as an organizer for the United Farm Workers and as a public interest lawyer. But the herons beckoned a new career. In 2000, she founded a nonprofit, San Francisco Nature Education, devoted to taking elementary school children from underserved communities on field trips to learn about birds. To date, the program has served more than 20,000 kids. She also runs a program for teenagers; as interns they help run the Heron Watch, while also learning about birds. It’s all in the service of fostering a sense of connection to the natural world.

Three decades on, nothing has dimmed her passion for the Great Blue Heron. “They’re the most charismatic birds in North America,” she says simply. She loves their massive wingspan, their angular grace, the impressive figure they cut moving through the sky. (Famed birdwatcher Roger Tory Peterson once described a heron slowly flapping its way down Fifth Avenue with "its rubbery neck in a loop and its collapsible legs trailing like loose baggage.") She likes the displays the males put on to attract a mate and their elaborate courtship rituals in which they groom each other’s feathers and clack each other’s bills.

But what she likes most is the birds’ egalitarian nature. In many bird species, the males are dead beats who take off soon after mating.  But male and female Great Blues work together to build their nest, tend their eggs and care for their chicks. “I wouldn’t study sexist birds,” she says. “You know, Gloria Steinem is a friend of mine.”

She once even saw a juvenile female get on top during mating. “It’s rare, but I saw it. Imagine that. I always say you learn by looking and the more you look, the more you learn.”  

DeStefanis has maintained a careful record of the heronries at Stow Lake, tracking how many nests are built and how many chicks survive. Some years it’s just a few; 2019 was the best year with eight nests and 21 chicks who lived to fly off on their own.

Heron Watch volunteer Janel Schulenberg points out one of the nests. "I used to be afraid of birds," she said. Clearly, not anymore.

Though she’s in her 70s now and walks with the aid of two canes while she recovers from surgery, DeStefanis is indefatigible. All morning she kept up a steady stream of instructions for her volunteers and made sure that everyone who peeped through scopes put something in the donation can sitting on the folding table. When one guy took a picture of the plastic heron that she’s poked through the sunroof of her Honda, she teased (but only halfway), “That’s twenty-five cents! You can make a donation over there.” And then turned to me and said, “There’s a saying —nobody gets by Nancy.”

Toward the end of the morning, a family came back from a birding trip to Strawberry Island led by one of DeStefanis’s senior interns, Joy Chang. Nancy fist-bumped the boy, then quizzed him and his younger sister: Did they have fun? What was their favorite bird? She told them about her internship program, though it would be several years before either was old enough to be eligible.

Before they left, she had one last thing to share. “I want to sing you a song I wrote,” she said and launched into “My Blue Herons,” written with a friend and sung to the tune of “My Blue Heaven.”

In Golden Gate Park, From Morning to Dark, I’ll watch over my Blue Herons…..

You can hear it here: