Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(24)

“James! Darling, come look.”

She has begun to sight the great blue heron more frequently, at unpredictable hours of the day.

She believes that there is just one great blue heron at the lake. At least, she has never seen more than one at a time.

The large predator bird is fascinating to her. There is something very beautiful about it—there is something very ugly about it.

On her walks the widow has discovered the solitary heron hunting for fish in a creek that empties into the lake, that bounds the edge of her property—standing in the slow-moving water very still, poised to strike.

For long minutes the heron remains unmoving. You might think that it isn’t a living creature but something heraldic wrought of pewter, an ancient likeness. Then as an unwitting fish swims into view the heron is galvanized into action instantaneously, stabbing its beak into the water, thrashing its wings to keep its balance, emerging in triumph with a squirming fish in its bill.

It is a shocking sight! It is thrilling.

No sooner does the widow catch a glimpse of the fish caught in the heron’s bill than the fish has disappeared, in a single swallow into the predator’s gullet. The rapacity of nature is stunning. Here is raw, primitive hunger. Here is pure instinct, that bypasses consciousness.

Sometimes, if the fish is too large to be swallowed by the heron in a single gulp, or if the heron has been distracted by something close by, the heron will fly away with the live fish gleaming and squirming in its bill.

There is a particular horror in this. The widow stares transfixed. It is not so difficult to imagine a gigantic heron swooping at her, seizing her in its bill and bearing her away to—where?

The heron invariably flies to the farther side of the lake, and disappears into the marshland there. Its flight seems awkward, ungainly like a pelican’s flight—the enormous slate-gray wings like an umbrella opening, legs dangling down. Almost, if you don’t understand what a killing machine the heron is, and how precise its movements, there is something comical about it.

Except this isn’t so, of course. The heron is as much a master of the air as other, seemingly more compact and graceful birds.

The widow is appalled, yet riveted: that reptilian fixedness to the heron’s eyes. Obviously, the heron’s eye must be sharp as an eagle’s eye, to discern the movement of prey in a dense and often shadowed element like water.

The long thin stick-like legs, that dangle below as the bird flies flapping the great wings. The long S-curved neck, the long lethal beak of the hue of old, stained ivory.

Difficult to get very close to the vigilant bird but the widow has seen that it has a white-feathered face. Dark gray plumes run from its eyes to the back of its head, like a mask. There is a curious rather rakish dark-feathered quill of several inches jutting out at the back of the heron’s head—this feature (she will discover) is found only in the male. Its wide wings are slate-colored with a faint tincture of blue most clearly sighted from below, as the heron flies overhead.

Yet it is strange, the bird is called a great blue heron. Most of its feathers are gray or a dusty red-brown: thighs, neck, chest.

She has heard the heron’s cry many times now: a hoarse, harsh croak like a bark. Impossible not to imagine that there is something derisive and triumphant in this cry.

“James, listen! We’d been hearing the great blue heron for years without realizing what it was . . .”

The harsh cry is a mockery of the musical cries and calls of the songbirds that cluster close about the house, drawn to bird feeders. (She and James had always maintained bird feeders. Among her dearest memories are of James biting his lower lip in concentration as he poured seed into the transparent plastic feeders on the deck at the rear of the house in even the bitterest cold of winter.)

In books on her husband’s shelves the widow has researched the great blue heron—Ardea herodias. Indeed the heron is a primitive creature, descended from dinosaurs: a flying carnivore.

Its prey is fish, frogs, small rodents, eggs of other birds, nestlings and small birds. Eagles, the heron’s natural predators, are not native to this part of the northeast.

Considering its size the heron is surprisingly light—the heaviest herons weigh just eight pounds. Its wingspan is thirty-six inches to fifty-four inches and its height is forty-five to fifty-five inches. It is described as a wading bird and its habitat is general in North America, primarily in wetlands.

She and James had favored the familiar songbirds—cardinals, titmice, chickadees, house wrens and sparrows of many species—and had less interest in the waterfowl, that often made a commotion on the lake; now, she is less interested in the small, tamer birds and is drawn more to the lake and the wetlands surrounding it.

In the night, the blood-chilling cry of the screech owl wakes her, but also comforts her. She keeps her window open, even on cold nights, not wanting to be spared.

She has come to recall the heron attacking the mallards’ nests as an actual incident, shared with her husband. Vague in its context it is vivid in details and has come to seem the last time she and James had walked together along the lake shore, hand in hand.


Now I want only to do good. I want to be good.

If I am good the terrible thing that has happened will be reversed.


The cemetery is just ten minutes from the house. Very easy to drive there. No matter the weather.

It is not the cemetery favored by her husband’s family, which is in the affluent community of Fair Hills fifteen miles away. It is not the cemetery the widow was expected to have chosen in which to bury her husband—that is, her husband’s “remains.” Instead this is an old Presbyterian cemetery in a nearby village, dating to the 1770s. It is small, it is not so very well tended. It is no longer exclusively for members of the church but has become a municipal cemetery. The earliest grave markers, close behind the dour stone church, are a uniform dull gray whose chiseled letters are worn smooth with time and have become indecipherable. The markers themselves are thin as playing cards, nearly; tilted at odd, jaunty angles in the mossy earth.