ARMN’s 2026 Honeymooners Heronry Hike

Text by Anna Dixon; photos by Barbara Saffir, except as noted.

On a glorious March morning, about 25 participants gathered at Burke Lake in Fairfax County, VA for The Honeymooners Heronry Hike, a lively walk to Vesper Island’s great blue heron “rookery” (AKA a heronry or nesting colony). Led by Barbara Saffir and Carol Mullen, the group was treated to one of the region’s most accessible spring wildlife spectacles—and the closest accessible rookery in the entire DMV (DC, MD, VA)! This time of the year was ideal . . . the herons were nesting and the tree foliage had not yet shielded the views on our side away from the island.

Burke Lake Park encompasses 888 acres, with the 218-acre public fishing lake at its center and a nearly 5-mile trail circling the shoreline. Vesper Island, where the heronry is located, is maintained as a refuge, helping preserve a remarkable nesting site within one of Fairfax County’s best-known outdoor destinations.

The highlight was the great blue herons themselves. The colony was active and crowded, with birds on roughly three dozen nests sharing close quarters in the treetops. Participants watched courtship displays, territorial movement, stick deliveries, and coordinated nest building. What seemed from afar to be stillness resolved into a social, highly synchronized breeding colony.

Great blue herons (Ardea herodias) are fascinating in several ways. The National Park Service identifies them as the largest heron in North America. During breeding season, males gather sticks while females build the nest, and pairs perform ritualized courtship postures before settling into incubation and chick-rearing. They also have unusual powder-down feathers that fray into a fine dust used in preening, and they cool themselves through gular fluttering, a throat-vibration behavior that increases evaporative heat loss.

These features are not just interesting. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service both note that colonial nesting waterbirds function as indicators of habitat condition and ecosystem health. Heronries depend on suitable feeding wetlands, secure nesting trees, and freedom from repeated disturbance during the breeding season. When nesting effort and reproductive success weaken, it can signal that the surrounding system is under stress.

The photographs captured the morning beautifully, with:

breeding adults in close company,

herons displaying for their mate, with their amazing colors,

a male flying in with nesting material,

and the beak-to-beak handoff of a stick to his mate. That exchange can look almost like a kiss, but it is really a practical and intimate act of pair coordination, one of the clearest signs that spring at the rookery is a season of construction as much as display.

Participants also witnessed a smaller but memorable drama before the hike even began: a male eastern bluebird (Sialia sialis) repeatedly attacking its reflection in a car mirror, apparently mistaking it for a territorial rival. It was a fitting overture to a morning defined by breeding urgency, vigilance, and performance.

The outing also rewarded close attention to the forest floor and trail edge. Along the roughly half-mile hike to the rookery, hikers learned about native plants, such as club moss (family Lycopodiaceae), with flammable lycopodium spores that were used in the past for gunpowder, fireworks, and camera flashes. This reminded us how even the smallest woodland organisms are engineered for dispersal, renewal, and survival.

The group also spied several cranefly orchids (Tipularia discolor) with their purple and green leaves. In late July, the leaves will be long gone and replaced with stalks of ivory-colored orchids.