Reddish Egret watches for night

A reddish egret does a one-legged, wait-for-the-night-to-come, stance near Lacissine, LA. The highway night gathering spot for egrets and their friends is one of my favorite places.  Lucky that it happens to be just where I am often passing by as the dark eats up the sky. The assembling includes hundreds (maybe thousands) of Cattle Egrets, Ibis, Snowy Egrets, shore gulls, Blue Herons, Cormorants, an occasional Roseate Spoonbill and more.

It looks as though our solitary sentinel may have snagged a spiders web on his glide to his post.

Heron hangout harkens thousands

How many Ibis can you get into the top of a pine tree?

This is the place to find out.  Last night was the 4th time I have visited the spot along I-10 at the Lacassine exit. Three times it looked like this; once there were no birds.  I think I have it figured out now -- they all start congregating here about an hour and a half before sunset. Don't come in the middle of the day.

This time, like the others, there were thousands of herons -- Ibis, Cattle Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Blue Herons, Comorants and even some  shore gulls passed by ( but didn't land).

The spot is in the northwest corner of the intersection on the service road (not on the I-10 on-ramp).  Just as you come onto the service road and negotiate the sharp turn, there is a small industrial facility (looks like a sand operation). The trees behind it  are where the herons hang out. They literally fill the trees and keep coming by the hundreds.  They fill the trees behind the facility first and then spill out toward the I-10 as the sun goes down and room on the limbs runs out.

You can easily get a solid half hour to an hour of shooting photos in, depending on your lenses, the clouds and what ISO you want to go to.  I shot this at 800 and about 1/500 sec. I was using a lens equivalent to 450mm.    If you have better glass, this would be a real treat.

Pulling up -- egret makes final approach

I guess I am fixated on landings this week. Oh, go ahead, you can agree. It's true.

This is another shot of a cattle egret pulling up and ready to thrust his feet out to catch a branch. This was shot at Audubon Park in New Orleans near the end of the nesting season, so you can be sure, this egret is bringing back a tasty meal for his/her over anxious young ones.

--steve buser

Cattle egret shows grace in landing

It's amazing that birds are so graceful in flying. Consider the 'simple' act of landing. This cattle egret at Audubon Park in New Orleans does and amazing set of controls as he gets ready to snatch a limb in flight. He drops he legs from the straight back position and slowly moves them forward to check his last bits of motion.

He curves his wings around to pick up more lift as he slows by also using the wings as air breaks, including an forward flap or two if necessary because he is coming in to fast.

He fixes his eye on his target. At the last second, the goal is to glide up to the limb with little forward motion left and settle on to it.

--steve buser

Egret etiquette,

On the right the momma (or daddy -- they share duties) Cattle Egret delivers a juicy meal to one of its rowdy chicks. The meal is anything but peaceful as the chicks cry, skirmish, flap their wings and come after mom with a vengeance to get the food faster. Mom thrusts her beak down into the chick's open beak and regurgitates the meal. With the beaks flying both ways trying to make the connection, it is definitely a miracle there are not more one eyed chicks and moms.

Docking the space shuttle this isn't. But it works.

-- steve buser

The bird bard

News flash -- Just got word that Travel Channel's Samantha Brown visits New Orleans on her next episode of Passport To Great Weekends -- tomorrow at 9 pm here (10 p.m. EST -- Thursday, July 17th.). I can't wait to catch this one.

If you want to be ready ahead of time, you can get a quick take on what "Sam" is about by her newly uploaded YouTube videos here or get more of the packaged e-kit at: http://www.media.travelchannel.com/ekit/greatweekends/HTML/press.html

--sb

Back to the blog --

Though I know it is just a meal-time family squable, you would have a hard time convincing me that this merry troop of Cattle Egret is not practicing for a Shakespearean play. Perhaps Mom (or Dad) on the left with the buff feathers on its head is quoiting that old Shakesbirdean line: All life is but a branch." Or perhaps, "To feed or not to feed, that is the question."

Take your shot at a good line.

Methinks the two youngsters on the right are plotting a little palace coup if Mom doesn't hurry up and get the food down their hatches. (Audubon Park, Oschner Island rookery).

-- steve buser

Lagniappe -- on Pixel Eyed today, a Great Egret does the double glide across the lagoon -- Double Glide

Is it soup yet?

You know how kids are --they can never wait. Mom (the buffish-topped Cattle Egret on the right) is trying to tell them that dinner is not ready yet, but the chicks are hungry and getting up in her face. (Audubon Park, Oschner Island rookery, New Orleans)

When the chicks would start poking at her, this gal would fly a few branches away and let breakfast simmer a little longer. I don't know why she didn't stay there, but in a minute or so, she'd flutter back near the chicks and they would start their fighting and wing flapping and getting up in her face again. I suspect that the exercise was good for the chicks and helped to get them ready to leave the nest earlier.

I wonder if Cattle Egret have problems with the chicks returning to the nest?

-- steve buser

Lagniappe --Check out PixelEyed -- a Egret sails through the trees on her(his) way home with the groceries.

Bellying up

Belly full, this Cattle Egret makes a sweeping entrance through the trees to her nest and three hungry chicks whom she will soon be feeding. She has her wings up to start the braking process and then will pull up and drop her toes on a skinny, but sturdy enoug,h branch to absorb her landing energy without breaking. The ruckus of the chicks will start immediately -- fighting over who will be first to get a beak full. It can sometimes get very violent.

The Cattle Egret is a recent arrival into the U.S. -- being brought from the Old World in the 1940's to help protect cattle from parasites, but colonies had no natural predators and grew rapidly here. This picture is a the rookery at Oschner Island in Audubon Park of New Orleans.


--steve buser