Herons at Turkey Pond
Herons have been spotted at Turkey Pond from the trail for years. Often, it has been a single blue heron; since blue herons have a lifespan of up to 15 years, we may have been seeing the same heron year after year! Occasionally green herons appear. Unlike the blue heron, who is seen year-round at Turkey Pond, the green herons tend to show up in the summer and then are on their way.
The great blue heron is the largest heron in North America and one of North Carolina’s most familiar and frequently-seen wading birds. An adult heron stands more than 3 feet high and weighs approximately 5 ½ pounds. Its wingspan covers nearly 6 ½ feet. Males and females do not differ much in size, so the sexes are not easily outwardly distinguishable. Herons usually live around shores of shallow water and in wetlands, where they feed on whatever they see in or around the water: fish, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, insects and other birds. A heron’s eyesight is very keen. You’ll often see it standing stock-still, looking for its prey, waiting for it to get close enough so it can spear it with a rapid thrust of its bill.
Because of their large size, herons can also feed in deeper waters where other birds cannot reach. Herons can also fly short distances, hovering over the water and picking up prey. Herons usually breed in colonies, often in trees, from February through May. The female lays a clutch of three or four eggs just once a year, and the male and female take turns incubating the eggs over a month or so, and feeding them once they hatch. The young herons fledge – or take their first flight – at about 60 days. By the fall, they have all gone their separate ways.
It’s been a few years since juvenile blue herons have been sighted at Turkey Pond. It is possible that colonies have hatched in a more hidden location than the one where the heron has traditionally been spotted.
Green herons are smaller than blue herons – about the size of a crow - and multi-colored. Green herons have a diet similar to the blue heron’s: they may fish by standing in one place and waiting for prey to come near, searching the water by sight. Unlike the blue heron, they also drop bait to lure fish. One of their more fascinating techniques is to use insects or other items as bait, dropping them onto the surface to attract fish. They may also stir up the water with their feet to expose prey.
The great blue heron is the largest heron in North America and one of North Carolina’s most familiar and frequently-seen wading birds. An adult heron stands more than 3 feet high and weighs approximately 5 ½ pounds. Its wingspan covers nearly 6 ½ feet. Males and females do not differ much in size, so the sexes are not easily outwardly distinguishable. Herons usually live around shores of shallow water and in wetlands, where they feed on whatever they see in or around the water: fish, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, insects and other birds. A heron’s eyesight is very keen. You’ll often see it standing stock-still, looking for its prey, waiting for it to get close enough so it can spear it with a rapid thrust of its bill.
Because of their large size, herons can also feed in deeper waters where other birds cannot reach. Herons can also fly short distances, hovering over the water and picking up prey. Herons usually breed in colonies, often in trees, from February through May. The female lays a clutch of three or four eggs just once a year, and the male and female take turns incubating the eggs over a month or so, and feeding them once they hatch. The young herons fledge – or take their first flight – at about 60 days. By the fall, they have all gone their separate ways.
It’s been a few years since juvenile blue herons have been sighted at Turkey Pond. It is possible that colonies have hatched in a more hidden location than the one where the heron has traditionally been spotted.
Green herons are smaller than blue herons – about the size of a crow - and multi-colored. Green herons have a diet similar to the blue heron’s: they may fish by standing in one place and waiting for prey to come near, searching the water by sight. Unlike the blue heron, they also drop bait to lure fish. One of their more fascinating techniques is to use insects or other items as bait, dropping them onto the surface to attract fish. They may also stir up the water with their feet to expose prey.
The Trail in Winter
Friends of the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail Honor Skip Balsley
Longtime trail-keeper, board member, and master planner Skip Balsley was honored on December 15, 2025 for his many years of dedication, leadership and support for the trail. If grass needed mowing or leaves raking, if a tree needed to be cut, or trash picked up, if bylaws needed to be rewritten or meetings chaired, Skip was on it. Along with his partner in trailsmanship, Craig Cardwell, Skip could be counted on for making sure the trail was safe, beautiful, and sustainable for the future. As Skip retires, we can only hope we will find more volunteers to follow in his footsteps!
Fall is a beautiful time to walk the trail! The leaves are gorgeous and the temperatures mild. When the trees start shedding their leaves, we have a great crew of volunteer leaf relocators who make sure you can see the gravel and the orange-marked roots and stones!
Did You Know? How Rain Becomes a River!
When rain falls on the land, the soil absorbs as much as it can. Excess water can collect beneath the earth's surface in pores and crevices of rocks and soil. This is called groundwater. The layers of soil and rock that contain useable quantities of groundwater are called aquifers.
When the water moving underground finds an opening to the land surface and emerges, this is called a spring. Sometimes it’s just a trickle, maybe only after a rain, and sometimes it’s a continuous flow.
If the terrain is not flat, the water will flow downhill, creating a creek. Creeks continue to flow downhill until they merge to form larger streams and eventually rivers.
If the water encounters a bowl-shaped depression in the ground, it may fill the bowl (called a basin) and depending on how big the bowl is, it may become a pond or a lake.
Even if the lake is dammed, water may find a way to flow out and rejoin creeks or streams flowing downhill to rivers and eventually to oceans.
Visitors to the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail will see tiny Carroll Creek at various points along the trail. Carroll Creek is also responsible for Turkey Pond, Little Niagara, Lake Betsy, and Lake Betsy’s waterfall, and is a tributary of Wolf Island Creek, which flows into the Dan River in Pittsylvania County, Virgina.
One branch of Carroll Creek starts about a half mile due west of the trail, coming out of several ponds just north of Wentworth Street. It meanders north and east toward Lake Hazel at the Betsy-Jeff Penn 4H Center.
If you’re walking the trail clockwise from the kiosk, you’ll see a spring at the Spring House, which becomes another small branch that parallels the trail down to the south end of Turkey Pond.
Sometimes the water collects in that area, waiting to drain into Turkey Pond, which is why a boardwalk was finally built there.
Turkey Pond has a dam on the north side, which allows overflow from the pond, and that water rejoins the creek at bridge of the “Hurricane” boardwalk.
It then flows under the Military Bridge and on into Little Niagara on its way into Lake Betsy.
The overflow from Lake Betsy cascades in a waterfall down from the dam to the 4H Center’s stables, where it joins the other branch of Carroll Creek coming out of Lake Hazel.
From there Carroll Creek continues east, passing under NC 14, where it joins Wolf Island Creek coming northeast from Reidsville, on its way up toward the Dan River in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.
When the water moving underground finds an opening to the land surface and emerges, this is called a spring. Sometimes it’s just a trickle, maybe only after a rain, and sometimes it’s a continuous flow.
If the terrain is not flat, the water will flow downhill, creating a creek. Creeks continue to flow downhill until they merge to form larger streams and eventually rivers.
If the water encounters a bowl-shaped depression in the ground, it may fill the bowl (called a basin) and depending on how big the bowl is, it may become a pond or a lake.
Even if the lake is dammed, water may find a way to flow out and rejoin creeks or streams flowing downhill to rivers and eventually to oceans.
Visitors to the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail will see tiny Carroll Creek at various points along the trail. Carroll Creek is also responsible for Turkey Pond, Little Niagara, Lake Betsy, and Lake Betsy’s waterfall, and is a tributary of Wolf Island Creek, which flows into the Dan River in Pittsylvania County, Virgina.
One branch of Carroll Creek starts about a half mile due west of the trail, coming out of several ponds just north of Wentworth Street. It meanders north and east toward Lake Hazel at the Betsy-Jeff Penn 4H Center.
If you’re walking the trail clockwise from the kiosk, you’ll see a spring at the Spring House, which becomes another small branch that parallels the trail down to the south end of Turkey Pond.
Sometimes the water collects in that area, waiting to drain into Turkey Pond, which is why a boardwalk was finally built there.
Turkey Pond has a dam on the north side, which allows overflow from the pond, and that water rejoins the creek at bridge of the “Hurricane” boardwalk.
It then flows under the Military Bridge and on into Little Niagara on its way into Lake Betsy.
The overflow from Lake Betsy cascades in a waterfall down from the dam to the 4H Center’s stables, where it joins the other branch of Carroll Creek coming out of Lake Hazel.
From there Carroll Creek continues east, passing under NC 14, where it joins Wolf Island Creek coming northeast from Reidsville, on its way up toward the Dan River in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.
Volunteers Get It Done!
The trail's volunteers have been busy! The new storage shed behind the kiosk has been taking shape over the past year, the pace of work dictated by volunteer schedules, weather, and bird nests. And the bamboo down by the observation deck at Lake Betsy, planted 100 years ago at Betsy Penn's direction ("wouldn't that look nice?"), would overtake the bridge and the trail if it weren't for the relentless efforts of the bamboo team, chainsaws in hands. Volunteers perform the day-to-day chores of trash and recycling pick-ups, cutting down dead trees, cleaning the lavatory, replacing boards on the boardwalk, wildflower planting, clearing out the drain at the dam, and, in general, looking after the trail, its environment, and the historic structures that speak to us of days gone by.
State Grant Funds Trail Improvements
A state grant, administered by Dan River Basin Association for the benefit of the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail, has brought several much-needed improvements to the trail in 2024-2025. Our tax dollars at work! The Turkey Pond boardwalk was raised about 8 inches off the ground: enough to keep the marshy water from soaking the boards, but not much more than a reasonable step off. Also added was a bridge with railings over the stream, recreating a similar bridge, an Eagle Scout project, that was destroyed by fallen trees several years ago.
In 2024, the Lake Betsy boardwalk got a new "bump-out" with benches at the little waterfall, an amazing Eagle Scout project. Grant funds then added a ramp at the dam end for a smoother step onto the gravel trail, and two additional bump-outs with benches on the tree side to provide a kind of passing lane.
In 2025, grant funds also provided for new gravel to the trail from the parking lot up to Little Niagara, to replace the gravel that over time gets washed downhill and to the downside by rainwater.
The bridge near Turkey Pond is now high enough that it doesn't get soaked by the creek when it rains.
This renovation of the Lake Betsy boardwalk means a smoother passage from the boardwalk to the gravel trail.
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The Turkey Pond boardwalk covers marshy ground, and raising it up about 8 inches means it's less vulnerable to water damage.
The state grant funded two "bump outs" along the Lake Betsy boardwalk.
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New gravel!
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