Blue Heron by Linda Molenaar

Linda Molennar (A ‘07) // linda.molenaar.nu

Friday 19 March 2021

Hello (bird) friends,

This morning everything was suddenly very different.

I was, like every day, doing my walk around 7.30 in Het Frankendael Park in Amsterdam East. I searched, as I do since January, for the beautiful green/blue eggshells of the blue heron. I want to use this in a work of art because I like to work with animal material. There has been a colony there for years and I so enjoy those primal courtship cries when it is still winter. I don’t

understand why people think blue herons are ugly, they have something prehistoric. I came across an unbelievable and on closer inspection quite rare phenomenon; four fresh dead fry [chicks]  on the ground underneath one tree (with five nests) about four weeks old. They looked so beautiful. How so? Could it be because there had been frost again last night, is there little food and too large a population, do they have a disease, are they too many young to maintain, competition from other adult strange herons that have started hacking? 

On Monday I found a heron vomit ball between the eggshells, with plastic and elastic. I watched this vanitas event and to my surprise there was another one that was breathing, what a weird moment that I immediately picked up the shiver to warm it up. Minutes I stood there with the poor creature in my hands, what now? No phone, no people (that’s  why I like to walk early). I decided to take the limp little animal home. It had wounds on the head and both eyes were strangely behind a swollen membrane, there was very little action in this toddler and it was in bad shape and I think was in a kind of shock. Its long gray toes with sharp nails had gripped my fingers firmly, as if I were the last straw. I felt the heart pounding in my hand; a fighting urge to live, I thought.

Because of my heat, during my quite long way back home, it occasionally got a bit edgy, it even pecked my coat sometimes. I kept the head straight and the wings nicely closed, so that he couldn’t spread them.

At home I wrapped an old tea towel around it and let it rest on my warm stomach with a woolen blanket over it, while quietly waiting on the couch for the animal ambulance (called by a curious passer-by). My mother told me from her own experience with a tawny owl that I had to water it. Getting started with a small syringe, difficult hassle with one hand, because he didn’t want to. Success, hopla immediately a big bottle of shit (on my pants of course) haha ​​that reassured me something in something out, luckily that still works. Try again, a cry yes because I sprayed it too hard. Then firmly upright under my black body warmer in the sun together behind the computer. Now and then some noises and sparring, sometimes checking if he was still alive, or maybe he’s getting too hot now. What a responsibility like. Well, did I do the right thing?

I sent a message with photo to birdwatcher and teller Pieter van der Linden of the Frankendael Park (with whom I have my first bird counting appointment next week). Luckily he called me right back. This doesn’t happen often, he said. Would you like to put it on the national site for birds (waarnemingen.nl)? So I finally created an account. He would have done it too and luckily the animal ambulance also reacted very positively. He has just been picked up and is going to De Vogelopvang in Z-O De Toevlucht, I am still full of it, such a beautiful young fighting for his life, a real Amsterdam punk. I can smell him enough. ‘Rox’ told me the next day that ‘Punkie’ was still alive and that he had spit a vomit ball (so he was still being fed by his parents). It was a good sign that he had survived the night with ointment on the swollen membranes, antibiotics and painkillers. Now force-fed and cross fingers.

March 30 was ‘Punkie’s’ last day of life. He was full of life, that’s why they waited so long. He had been hit too hard on the head to be viable on his own. He screamed a lot and loudly but kept his head to one side and did not eat himself. So the rascal is no more, but the experience remains forever.

Linda Molenaar