by Erik Baard
A skeptic might say that a naturalist hoping for the Great Egret to visit the Newtown Creek is a bit like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin. Happily, the skeptic would be wrong.
This morning, Bernie Ente snapped this quick shot of one above the English Kill (one of the most polluted sections of the creek) with a cheap point-and-shoot camera. I thought after bumming you all out with my biodecathection essay for the past couple of days, you deserved this marvelous moment.
The beautiful Great Egret is internationally known as the Audubon Society’s symbol. The society was formed over a century ago when a fashion for feathered hats wiped out 95% of the Great Egret population. Citizens were sparked into action, and they formed one of our nation’s earliest conservation movements and made history when national wildlife protection laws were passed. Today the threat to this species is less visible and dramatic, but equally real: our wetlands are receding at an alarming rate due to pollution and at times thoughtless development. Without healthy marsh grasses, this species of bird will just as surely die off as if hunters set their sites on them.
I’ve most often seen egrets on Mill Rock Island just south of Hell Gate, and they’ve been reported at North Brother and South Brother islands, and the islands of the Arthur Kill. You can recognize them easily by their yellow bills, black legs, and white feathers. In flight they flex their necks into an S shape, and their wingspan is impressive at well over four feet (more than a meter).
Though a mate to the bird in the photo was on a nearby muddy bank, often a great egret will be spotted as the sole representative of its species among many other birds, all congregating. This is normal, and perhaps understandable for a creature that starts life with a battle to the death with siblings in the nest! As adults, Great Egrets hunt alone, stalking small amphibians and fish, snakes, and crustaceans in the shallows of coves and inlets like Anable Basin, Bushwick Inlet, Fresh Kills, and the Newtown Creek. Mill Rock is in the center of the East River, but has a delightful little cove notched into its northern side.
for years, i road the LIRR to work, and twice a day, as the traind passed through Little Neck Bay, at AlleyPond Park, i would sit in quiet reverance of the wetland.
Egret were frequent seen, and there were nesting swans, cormorants, several varieties of ducks, quails, and other land fowl (and Raccoons, opposum, and the occational vixen with kits in tow.
To see the smaller wild life required walks in the park..
What always amazes me, are the small bits of wonder that survive.. (in a month, i’ll visit the wild strawberries that survive in a protected patch of Rego Park!)