Egrets galore

Although the Great Horned Owls are already seeing their chicks leave the nest, nesting season for most birds is just beginning. The spring migrants are finally showing up… they aren’t late — I’ve just been impatient for their return. I’ll write soon about some of the birds I’m hoping to photograph, but it’s going to be hard to witness a nesting experience better than what I had this week when I visited an egret rookery!

Bethany is a suburb of Oklahoma City and has many neighborhoods with wonderful oak trees. For some reason, great numbers of egrets began nesting in Bethany more than three decades ago. They’ve been chased out of some neighborhoods; the egrets simply vacated other nesting sites after a few years. This spring the birds decided on a new location (I don’t know how the collective decision is made… has to be one of the strange mysteries of nature) and I was delighted when I received an e-mail from another birder with directions to the new site.

The new rookery* is located along a paved road that leads into a neighborhood. This may not sound like the greatest news to you, but it sure beats climbing over fences and trudging through tick-infested fields — such foolishness as I’ve been known to do just to get a photo! Yes, I drove down the paved road and saw more than 150 Great Egrets on the ground, in the trees and, to my delight, building nests in the tops of the trees. Scattered among the large number of egrets on this 3.7 acre wooded lot were a few Cattle Egret, Little Blue Herons, and a Black-crowned Night-Heron.

The birds didn’t seem disturbed by my presence and I had a wonderful time photographing the birds. The sky was a rich blue and the late afternoon sun highlighted the treetops filled with elegant, spectacular egrets! A few of the birds were already sitting on nests while others were flying in and out with sticks for the construction process. Great Egrets incubate eggs for 23-26 days and the young stay in the nest for 21 days. If all goes well, I may be able to visit the site several times during the next 6 weeks and get photographs of the birds with their young.

*I’ve heard Great Blue Heron and Great Egret nesting sites called rookeries and I think it’s a term that is commonly used. I learned this week, however, that it isn’t accurate. So I’ll pass along input from an expert birder who responded to a question on the OKBirds listserv about “rookery.” Steve Schafer wrote: Rookeries are named after the Rook, a European corvid (not exactly a crow, but close), that nests in large colonies. So, strictly speaking, only Rooks nest in rookeries. But these days the term is applied more widely, to pretty much any large bird that nests in large arboreal colonies, including herons. Heron nesting colonies are also known as “heronries.” (I’ve never heard of “ibiseries” or “storkeries,” however.) Perhaps it’s best to just play it safe and call them “nesting colonies.”

My lesson for the week 🙂

Happy birding!