LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The 19th annual Heron Days bird tours event is Saturday, May 4, and Sunday, May 5, sponsored by the Redbud Audubon Society.
The event features 90-minute pontoon-boat birding tours to see nesting birds and wildlife at two different locations on Clear Lake this year.
On Saturday, May 4, boats will leave from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. from the boat launch docks at Lakeside County Park in Kelseyville. The boat tours will go north along the shoreline of Clear Lake to the heron rookery near Corinthian Bay.
Sunday, May 5, boats will leave during the same hours from the boat launch docks at Redbud Park in the City of Clearlake. The boat tours will visit the heron rookery in Anderson Marsh at the south end of Clear Lake.
Each boat will have an experienced Audubon guide to explain the birds being seen on the tours. Besides several species of nesting herons and egrets, tour guests may see nesting osprey and cormorants, yellow-headed blackbirds, and Western and Clark’s grebes in courtship displays where they “dance” in pairs across the lake surface.
Boat tour tickets are $20 each and are available for on-line purchase at www.redbudaudubon.org or call 707-263-8030.
The other activities held at past Heron Festivals have been discontinued, including speakers, exhibit booths, and children’s activities.
With attendance reaching 2,000 people in recent years, the Heron Festival had grown to a point requiring over 200 Audubon volunteers and four months’ planning time for the all-volunteer festival managers. Consequently, this year’s event focuses only on the birding boat tours.