Bird Island Dispatch: 01.16.12

by Brian Fabry Dorsam

My friend fancied a read in the park so I took my binocular along and walked with her to Bird Island. We approached the island just before twilight. I could hear the cacophony of whistles and chirps from the ducks that overtook the island after the Great Egret emigration last spring. The trees were bare with winter and empty of nests. The ducks scampered on the leaf-littered ground, chattering senselessly in perpetual, maddening unrest. We sat on a bench facing the island and I pulled from my pack a field guide lent to me by a concerned friend. I flipped idly through it, hoping that my prior knowledge of the birds would help acquaint me with the guide and how best to use it. Tess pointed and I named the birds when I could.

‘Black-bellied Whistling Ducks,’ I sighed.

‘Noisy.’

‘They didn’t used to be here.’

‘They’re everywhere.’

‘The island used to be filled with egrets. Everywhere you see a duck, there used to be an egret. In the trees. All over the ground. Everywhere.’

Great Egrets are stunning animals. They average over 3 feet in length, which, alone, is enough to draw the eye. As herons go, only the Great Blue Heron averages longer with any consistency. They are slender in build and light for their size. At their heaviest they weigh about 2 pounds, which, to give you an idea, is just a bit more than my field guide. They have a distinct look of sophistication. In flight they are graceful and commanding. Their wingspan can reach an impressive 7 feet. On land they are nimble and fierce. One often finds them wading silently near the shore with the care of an expert hunter. They drive their heads into the water, using their long bills to spear their prey. With a glance one can understand why the National Audubon Society chose the bird for its symbol. They are profoundly elegant creatures. For their wide range of distribution, Great Egrets are called ‘cosmopolitan.’ This sounds about right.

She pointed.

‘Wood duck. Pretty, huh?’

She pointed.

‘Snow goose. White-morph.’ I felt damn impressive.

She pointed.

A small, black water bird with a white bill. I forgot. I flipped through my guide. ‘It’s a duck, right?’

‘You’re asking the wrong girl.’

‘It’s a duck.’ I looked at the bird again. I looked at my guide.

‘It’s black with a white bill,’ she told me. I knew this.

I looked at each duck in the guide, but nothing seemed right. I flipped back and forth, hoping it would appear. I looked back at it to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Then, quite suddenly, it dove into the water. “It dove! It’s a diving duck.” I looked at the diving ducks in my guide. It wasn’t there. I looked up. “It’s not in the guide,” I said, with totally unearned confidence.

'Great Egret.' Painted by John James Audubon in New Orleans in 1821.

Tess went back to her reading and I contemplated the bird. It swam idly before us, taunting me. The guide seemed pretty straightforward. I preferred it to the other guides I’d seen. The Audubon Society guides are oddly arranged, with the first half devoted solely to photographs and the second half devoted to tiresome text. For purposes of identification, I rely almost entirely on images, and the Audubon guides, while thorough in breadth, have only one image for each bird. With a nearly infinite variety of angles from which to view a bird and my vast ineptitude, I find one photograph to be entirely insufficient. Thankfully, my friend had lent me a Peterson guide, which provided a number of pictures for each creature depicting their changes in plumage during mating seasons and their appearance from above and below while in flight. Each drawing has a few small arrows directing the reader’s attention to distinguishing details, which is invaluable to unobservant dunces like myself. I must say my preference for the Peterson guide is due in no small part to the fact that each of the images is hand-drawn. Quite a feat, to be sure, and reminiscent in its way of the work of the great John James Audubon, which lends the whole endeavor a splendid degree of romance.

I paged through the book, admiring the drawings and the simplicity of its layout (I really could marry this thing), until I stumbled upon a small taxonomical subsection I hadn’t noticed before: Ducklike Swimmers. Ducklike. Well, the stupid duck wasn’t a duck after all; it was just ducklike. Pardon me. ‘An American Coot,’ I huffed. ‘It’s an American Coot.’ I tilted the guide toward Tess. She consulted it herself just to make sure.

‘So it is. You got it.’ She managed this with a waning enthusiasm that swiftly deflated my already vanishing confidence.

She pointed again, this time to a thin, white bird walking gently up the lagoon toward the island. Its gaze was toward the water, hunting for fish. By this time, night was setting in and it was getting more difficult to pick out the birds without a binocular. I reached into my bag and hunted for my glass. ‘A White Ibis, I think.’ I raised the glass to my eye. I watched the bird for a moment, studying its features, memorizing the color of its legs, the shape of its bill. I put down the glass and consulted the guide. I found the page dedicated to Ibises and saw the White Ibis at the bottom. There was an arrow pointing to its face and one to its legs. Red. I put the glass to my eye and found the bird. This couldn’t be an ibis. Its face was white, its bill was yellow. I looked down at its legs. Black. I grabbed my guide and raced through it. There it was – on the page exactly as in life. Snow white plumage. Yellow bill. Black legs. Great Egret.

Just as I looked up at the bird, it lifted itself from the water with massive thrusts, settled atop the evening breeze and flew south into the night.

We waited, but it never came back. Before long, the sun was down and the ducks had gathered on the island shore to rest. We collected our things and walked home as the air cooled.

It’s difficult to know what to make of the sighting. Perhaps it was the first of many. Perhaps it was merely a stray on an evening hunt, returning home to a distant rookery far from the reach of meddling, curious onlookers. In any event, it’s too early in the season to tell if the egrets will return to Bird Island. Though, if you ask me, I’d say that’s a good thing. I’d say that means there’s hope.