The call of the Great Blue Heron (Ardea Herodias) when they greet their mate at their nest has been described as a series of squawking “roh-roh-rohs”, also known as a landing call. This is a sound I’ve become familiar with while living in the Great Lakes basin, exploring riverbanks and marshes. This is a sound that makes me feel at home. When I timidly arrived in Idaho in early June, I knew I likely missed the heron breeding season, but that didn’t stop the bird from presenting me with my own “landing call”.
Hi. My name is Dela, and I’m a recent University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate where I earned a dual degree in Environmental Studies and Science Communication. Here at the Henry’s Fork Foundation, I’m the 2025 Aquatic Ecology Intern. I’ll be spending my summer collecting water quality data in Island Park Reservoir and Harriman State Park. But today, I’d like to tell you a story about my first time on the ranch.
It was a balmy Thursday as I loaded our field equipment into a drift boat with my supervisor Dr. Jack McLaren and fellow intern Teddy Montalvo. Curiosities ran rampant through my mind. Will I see a young trout fingerling? How swift is the flowing water? Which peaks are rising in the distance? My mind felt as turbulent as the river as Jack pushed and pulled us over the rocks. The tumbling thoughts only increased until we passed Osborne Springs and there he stood: a Great Blue Heron.
As we floated towards his home in the brush, he squawked and scrambled onward. Every couple of feet the watchful bird would notice us, fly ahead, and wait for us to meet him before repeating the pattern. My supervisor lightheartedly described this as awkward. I described it as beautiful. I admit, herons tend to move with a sort of clumsy grace that can seem eccentric to humans. That’s part of the reason why I love them. I couldn’t help but feel like this bird was a special gift, welcoming me to the West and showing me the way – giving me a unique “landing call”.
In the weeks since this initial encounter, I’ve had the honor of witnessing these beautiful birds over and over again. Every Thursday, I head to the ranch. Every Thursday, I find a Great Blue Heron waiting for me. Maybe it’s a coincidence – perhaps we both simply enjoy perching near sagebrush and sunflowers. However, I can’t quite explain why they always appear when I need a moment of encouragement.
As June fades into July, I look forward to more of these intimate moments getting to know Idaho’s many wild, living creatures. I can only imagine where the heron’s call will lead me next.
As it is the afternoon of December 31, I am closing the year with my annual fish-of-the-month blog, this one at the end of my 11th year of catching a fish in my home waters in each month of the year. To spare you the math, that’s 132 consecutive months of catching a wild trout or whitefish (and in some years I’ve fair-caught suckers and shiners, too) within a three-hour drive of my home in
In this blog post, we 1) present our turbidity and suspended sediment data, 2) explain our suspended load calculations, and 3) provide some additional information justifying why we think that a substantial amount of bed load was transported into the Henry’s Fork in addition to the suspended load. Since first observing high turbidity in Thurmon Creek and the Henry’s Fork downstream associated with the Silver Lake drawdown in November 2025, HFF’s Science and Technology team
Written by Doris Squeri Tom and I met on our first day of grad school back in 1982. We were both broke and stressed, and we both loved the outdoors, so I decided that an affordable way to relieve some of that stress might be to learn how to fly-fish. We had learned to fish with our dads when we were very small, but it was bait fishing, and we wanted to try something new.
The Henry’s Fork Drought Management Planning Committee (DMPC) met on Monday, November 24 to set this winter’s outflow and reservoir-fill strategy for Island Park Reservoir—an annual decision with implications for winter trout habitat in Box Canyon and the Ranch. Winter Outflow: What’s Coming on December 1 Beginning December 1, outflow from Island Park Dam will increase, bringing winter streamflow through Box Canyon to ~380 cfs from December through February*. That equates to 76% of Box
