10 Encounters with Great Blue Herons
When I transferred as a junior at Berkeley, I expected to start medical school after graduating. I selected Zoology as my major because it was a useful major for a premed. I’d never taken biology in high school or at Deep Springs, and I had to start with the introductory courses. I took Zoology 1A that spring and disliked that course. It was mainly memorization and devoid of concepts – and I deservedly got a C grade. I took Zoology 1B at UCLA that summer, disliked that course as well, and again, I got a well-earned C. Medical school was starting to look distant.
These introductory courses were dull. I had to memorize strange names of animals and their entirely too many body parts and tissues. These courses were concept-free and conveyed the distinct impression that everything interesting (if anything was interesting) about biology was already known, even though the structure of DNA was just then being discovered.
In the fall of 1964, I could finally take advanced courses. Life changed. I was fascinated by Richard Eiken’s course in Embryology, which started rudely at 8 am. I studied hard and was delighted to receive an A- grade. Starker Leopold, who had been Lee Talbot’s major professor and who was a son of the legendary Aldo Leopold, taught a mesmerizing course in Wildlife Biology. Leopold was a great biologist (National Academy), a leading conservationist, and a gifted lecturer. He could personalize issues in wildlife management because he had been there.
When he discussed deer overpopulation, he argued hunters should be hunting does, not just bucks. But he appreciated that doe hunting was politically intractable. During one lecture, he noted sadly,
“Bambi set game management back by 50 years.”
I did well in that course (A grade), and Leopold invited me to join a graduate seminar the following spring (1965). I was the only undergrad, and I had to work.
I reluctantly took Zoology 113: Natural History of the Vertebrates that same semester. Zoology majors were required to take either this course or an equivalent one on invertebrates. Both classes were notorious for the work they required. I had zero interest in inverts but liked vertebrates, so I chose the vertebrate course as the lesser of two evils.
Zoo 113 was team-taught by Ned Johnson (ornithologist), Seth Benson (mammologist), and Robert Stebbins (herpetologist). It had three lectures, one 3-hour lab, and one morning multi-hour field trip (Friday or Saturday) each week. By the end of the first week and field trip, I was hooked and couldn’t get enough of the material. I even read the textbook (something I’d rarely do in other classes) and then went to the library to look for more! This was the first course I’d taken in which learning was not only fun and engrossing, but compulsory. I had to learn more.
For many students in Z-113, doing an original field project was the most dreaded part of the course. We were expected to observe an animal of our choice, collect data, and write a term paper.
The summer before, David Campbell and I canoed along the Russian River in northern California. We’d spotted some Great Blue Herons foraging along the river. They were majestic and observable. So, I decided to watch their foraging behavior for my Z-113 project.
One weekend early in the term, a roommate and I drove to Marin County. We were merely exploring, but I wanted to look for sites where herons foraged. Arriving in Bodega Bay, we drove past a 1-room cottage (‘Rose Marie House’) that had a for rent sign. Perched on stilts along the bay, it even had a flag pole. We found the realtor and rented the cottage for spring break. Several friends joined us, and so the cost per person was minimal. Upon moving in, we raised a Mozart flag we’d made just for the occasion!
During that break, and on several weekends that spring, I watched herons in Bodega, in the Salicornia marshes along Tomales Bay, and on scattered farms in Marin. I soon noticed that herons had two different hunting styles, and I called these “stalking” and “still hunting.”
When hunting on land or along ponds, the herons would move slowly but steadily (‘stalking’), intently studying the ground or water in front of them. But when hunting along narrow inlets in the marshes of Tomales Bay – at least when the tide was flowing either in or out – the herons would stand motionless (‘still hunting’), letting the moving water bring food to them.
This explanation made sense – why move if the food will come to you? Little did I realize that Eric Pianka had described similar differences in “foraging mode” of North American desert lizards in that very same year. Eric coined the terms “sit-and-wait” versus “widely foraging.” Amusingly, Eric and I would later work together on foraging behavior in Kalahari lizards (see Chapter 23). But our initial forays into foraging mode were entirely independent.
I received an A grade for my term paper. I still have that term paper. It is the only academic relic I saved from my undergraduate years. My cumulative score in that course was far ahead of the rest of the class – quite a change from my mediocre performances in Zoology 1A and 1B. Learning and grades can change when one finds a topic of interest.
For me Z-113 became an unplanned life changer. After our Saturday morning field trips, I’d head to Albert’s Record Store and Smoke Shop on the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft. I’d buy a record album and chat with a salesman, who’d become a friend. One day he said:
“Do you really want to go to medical school and become a doctor? Every time you come here after a field trip, all you can talk about is some great bird, lizard, or salamander you’d just seen? Why don’t you go to grad school in Zoology and become a professor?”
Stunned silence on my part. Until that encounter, I assumed I’d become a medical doctor and had never ever considered becoming a professor. But suddenly it seemed like a potential career option. Lee Talbot’s visit to Deep Springs, Leopold’s Wildlife Biology class and graduate seminar, Zoology 113, and a fortuitous conversation in Albert’s Shop, combined and caused me consider changing my career plans.