One of the benefits of the work I have been doing helping my mother look after my father has been increased opportunities to drive along Highway 99W between Corvallis and Bellfountain. It's really some very nice country.
I like driving past the Winkle Buttes. I like seeing the hills which are surmounted by the Mysterious Big White Thing. I like seeing the occasional wildlife, including deer, Great Blue Herons and Snowy Egrets and occasional life-forms that I can't identify ("What's brown and long-legged and weighs about 100 pounds and doesn't seem to be a deer?" "I don't know." "Me neither").
The other day, I saw a largish gathering of egrets (I don't know whether they flock, ever, or if it was just a dense accumulation of egrets at a strangely attractive swampy patch). This inspired a train of thought that ran through many different regions, including Robert Heinlein's novel The Door Into Summer, and the thought that Professor Kirk's famous wardrobe must surely be a snowy egress.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Keep your mind on the road when you're driving."\\
1 comment:
Yes, egrets flock. Snowies are a little gregarious, and cattle egrets are seldom seen alone.
Great egrets, the big ones, and tri-color and reddish egrets are normally solitary, but mated pairs will set up in rookeries full of other herons. Your best chance to see lots of wading birds together is during nesting season; find a good rookery site, say a small island in a lake, and every square foot will be colonized. Some groups prefer to nest with conspecifics - the fishing pond half a mile from our house is claimed every year by the yellow-crowned night herons - but others will cluster with other species that have similar needs, so you might see great egrets, little blues, snowies, cattle egrets, and cormorants (not wading birds but with similar nesting habits) in the same rookery.
This time of year they might be focusing on an abundant resource, or they might be keeping eachother company.
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