A bit of clarification to start: The "herons" heron Island are named after are egrets, not herons, and they aren't responsible for the otherwordly noise that permeates the island after dark. Instead, blame the wedge-tailed shearwater (Puffinus pacificus), or muttonbird, which makes the racket. The birds travel during the day and return to the island at night to nest. They settle in and then start yelling at the top of their lungs.
The noise is deafening.
The shearwaters are not easy to spot, given their feeding and nesting habits, but birdwatcher will find plenty of opportunities for viewing and photography. Among the other species that visit Heron Island are buff-banded rails, silver gulls, white-breasted sea eagles, turnstones, and lesser golden plovers. But if 70,000 noddies, tens of thousands of shearwaters, egrets, and a long list of 30 - 40 species of other endemic and migratory birds brings to mind visions of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, this might not be the best destination for you.
Wildlife Tours at Heron Island Resort
Heron Island is about 800 metres (2,600 ft) long, and about 300 metres (980 ft) at its widest point, with a total area of about 16 hectares (40 acres). Most of Heron Island is occupied by its eponymous eco-resort, The island is also protected as a national park, and contains the University of Queensland's Heron Island Research Station, one of the world's premiere coral reef research facilities.
Rangers lead walking tours around the island and wading tours of the reef. (Figure about an hour at a stop-and-take-lots-of-picture pace.) In addition to the birds, noteworthy residents include green and loggerhead turtles, which nest during the Australian summer, and occasional visits from hawksbill turtles.
During sea turtle season, you can sit on the beach after midnight, and, if you're lucky, you might be able to watch a mother turtle laboriously crawl up to the tide line to dig a hole and deposit her eggs in the sand. That's the sum total of her maternal responsibility: Once the hole is dug, the eggs and the subsequent hatchlings are left to their fate. Egg laying begins in November and continues through to March. Hatching begins in January and runs though May, so the best time to see turtles laying or hatching is from January to March.
Finally, of course, Heron Island's scuba diving is world renowned, as it is one of the few places where scuba divers interested in visiting Australia's Great Barrier Reef can actually stay on the reef itself.
Karen Berger - Karen Berger is the author of 15 books. Please click on her name to read her full bio.
