Yes, blue heron droppings are remarkably disgusting, not to mention voluminous. Acrid, rotting fish. Fortunately, they walk around a lot, so they don’t normally deposit on cars.
Well, unless you’ve got one that’s taken to standing on your car.
re: nasty bird poop: I’m not sure the blue heron’s is any worse than other fish-eating birds’.
I volunteered for several years at the International Bird Rescue Research Center (they of the now infamous alien-in-a-duck radiograph), and so I’ve taken care of thousands and thousands of waterbirds. All of the fish-eating fowl had nasty, watery, stinky, foul poop. If the blue heron’s is any grosser than any other birds’, it must be a matter of tiny and imperceptible degree.
(And anyway, the blue heron doesn’t really have a fish-centered diet. The ones I’ve handled have been generally predatory, and I’ve found them full of gophers, smaller birds, mice and rats, crabs, etc. Fish is just part of what they eat.)
But grosser than any of the poop is this habit that cormorants and pelicans have: they vomit mostly-digested fish onto you when they’re upset. You’d pick up an ailing brown pelican – and they’re big! – and immediately try to direct its gullet away from you, or you’d be wearing maybe 60 partially digested herring, and a copious amount of pelican stomach fluids and acids and goop. And then you’d have the disgusting task of scraping all of that soft, lumpy, stinky fish and slime off of your clothing and the floor. Just try not to gag. No one wanted to stand close to you if that happened. And man is that a stink that lingers, all day!
Great image, Herb. Thx. Fits n sh!ts for dinner tonight!
djm