Now is a good time to review the herons and egrets. Nesting
has been largely completed and invariably some of these birds,
adults and young, head northward from the breeding sites that may
have been located to the south of our region. Too many people
believe that one must go to Florida to see, for example, egrets.
What they don’t realize is that quite a few great egrets nest in
Wisconsin.
Plenty of four-foot tall great blue herons breed in our area
along with the much smaller, foot-long, green heron. The white
color morph of the great blue heron is the great white heron, a
bird we have seen on a few occasions at the Everglades National
Park in Florida. The claim is that this is the largest water
bird in North America.
A rare bird to Wisconsin, the tri-colored heron, has been seen
by a lot of birders in recent weeks at the Horicon National
Wildlife Refuge. Originally this bird was referred to as the
Louisiana heron, not after the state of Louisiana but rather
after the Louisiana Purchase of the early 1800’s where apparently
they were fairly common at that time. Regardless of their
numbers, their great beauty easily attracted the attention of
Alexander Wilson who wrote about these and other birds seen
during that impo rtant period of land exploration.
Charlotte and I spent a few hours recently at the awesome
Horicon Marsh, mainly to photograph birds that could be seen near
U.S. Highway 49 that cuts across the north end of the marsh and
frequently brings one quite close to the activity.
One of our goals was to try to locate some white pelicans.
That didn’t prove to be difficult at all but unfortunately just
as I was prepared to take my first picture, around ten extremely
loud motorcycles came roaring down the highway and every one of
the pelicans took to the air and headed out of sight to the
north. We did at least have a brief moment to estimate the
number of pelicans, somewhere between 400-500.
Fortunately the great egrets weren’t nearly as sensitive to
the loud racket and continued their food finding, some as near as
50 yards from the highway. By the way, older bird guides refer
to this bird as the common egret. This name dates back to the
time when these birds were abundant enough to be considered
common. They are now called great egrets.
Much to our advantage the road builders used good judgment
when constructing this highway and made the shoulders on both the
north and south sides wide enough for cars to pull off and park.
Naturally this makes it ideal for those who wish to watch and/or
photograph the thousands of ducks, geese, herons, egrets,
moorehens, gulls, terns and other species.
Surely the great egrets numbered more than a hundred north of
the highway on the calm sunny morning of our adventure. What
natural attention-getters these dazzling white birds are with
their long legs, long neck, sharp spear-like bill and imposing
hunting stance. Many still retained their long, elegant,
ornamental nuptial plumes. It was this beautiful feature of
these egrets that nearly led to their demise between 1880 and
1910.
Fashion of the time demanded plumes for the millinery trade.
The well-paid plume hunters invaded rookeries and shot tens of
thousands of great egrets, snowy egrets and reddish egrets. In
future years this not-so-brief fashion craze would become a
classic example of man’s greed and woman’s vanity.
The National Audubon Society, with some help from the US
Government, came to the rescue and brought this despicable
atrocity to an end. Eventually it did require wardens being
placed in many of the heronries in order to protect the birds
from the plume hunters who didn’t give in very easily. The
National Audubon Society, still in its early formative years,
adopted the great egret as its official bird and symbol.
The Horicon Marsh, comprising around 32,00 acres, surely has
to be the hot spot of the Midwest when it comes to great white
egrets. The Four Mile and Cotton Island heron rookeries in the
state DNR-managed lower third of the Horicon Marsh are home to
large nesting colonies of especially great blue herons and great
egrets. Your best bet to experience this exciting phenomenon is
to check in at the DNR Service Center located on Hwy. 28 between
the cities of Horicon and Mayville for suggestions, maps and in
formation.
In some years it is not uncommon for there to be upwards of
800 great egrets on the marsh following nesting and also with the
addition of some birds having arrived from southern locations.
The water level at the marsh has subsided some in recent weeks
and the egrets we watched to the north of Hwy. 49 didn’t appear
to be having any difficulty in finding food. This may have
consisted of small fish, frogs, insects or perhaps even crayfish.
A favorite episode we enjoyed watching and photographing was one
egret perched on a small rise of land actively preening and
cleaning its plumage. It was then that we had a good look at the
bird’s gorgeous feathers.
This fascinating immaculate white bird surely must rank as one
of America’s favorite birds of the marshes and shallow water.
The fascinating, immaculate great egret ranks as
one of America's favorite birds of marches and shallow waters.
This column appeared in the Door County Advocate
on 07/31/2004.
© Copyright 2004 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.
