On The Rocks

Great Egret Ardea alba (Linnaeus) photographed on coast of Pacific Ocean in Mexico.

The Great Egret is a large, slender, white heron, with long neck, dark legs and long back plumes when breeding. It is distinguished from the white form of the Great Blue Heron by its smaller size, smaller, slighter and very slightly down curved (not straight) bill, dark (not pale) legs, lack of head plumes, and its substantial back plumes in breeding plumage. In North America, the species has been expanding its range northward in the past century, most recently beginning breeding in southern Ontario (Butler et al. 2000). Nesting and wintering populations are high in North America and increasing in Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico and California. In the 1980’s over 43,000 nested in Louisiana. It also is abundant further south with over 27,000 pairs reported in Tabasco, Mexico. Native Americans in North America believed two things: 1. A blue heron was a good omen to an Iroquois setting off to a hunt. 2. Deceased wise men were thought to return as herons.

Reckless Poem by Mary Oliver
Today again I am hardly myself.
It happens over and over.
It is heaven-sent.
It flows through me
like the blue wave.
Green leaves – you may believe this or not –
have once or twice
emerged from the tips of my fingers
somewhere
deep in the woods,
in the reckless seizure of spring.
Though, of course, I also know that other song,
the sweet passion of one-ness.
Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the
tumbled pine needles she toiled.
And I thought: she will never live another life but this one.
And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength
is she not wonderful and wise?
And I continued this up the miraculous pyramid of everything
until I came to myself.
And still, even in these northern woods, on these hills of sand,
I have flown from the other window of myself
to become white heron, blue whale,
red fox, hedgehog.
Oh, sometimes already my body has felt like the body of a flower!
Sometimes already my heart is a red parrot, perched
among strange, dark trees, flapping and screaming.

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