Journeys with Junior brings special visitors to backyard
Durango Herald, June 14, 2007
Becky Gillette, Program Director

Gale-force winds. Terrific gusts ripped branches from trees and shrouded mountains in dusty brown haze. The bugs stayed away, too, so I sat on the deck to enjoy the last of the evening light.

Movement flashed just across the driveway. Dropping down to a small Utah juniper with long landing gear extended was a great blue heron?

I stared through the waning twilight. Ghostly as it seemed, an enormous bird perched on top of my flimsy tree, trying very hard to hold on.

It wasn't a heron. It was pure white. Three feet long from beak to tail with a wingspan of more than 5 feet, a great egret was roosting in my little juniper.

I knew it was Mama egret when slightly larger Papa circled in and settled precariously nearby. Junior, the pint-sized version, showed up a few moments later, and I had three great egrets roosting in three junipers 40 yards from my chair.

The marshy wetlands of the Piedra and San Juan rivers are only a mile or two away as the egret flies - fine habitat for wading birds. But this was my yard, a mature piñon-juniper forest. Great egrets perched in measly little juniper trees? In a windstorm?

The egret family rose a few times, readjusting their roosting spots. As the 60 mph gusts continued, I was amazed that neither tree nor bird suffered from the combined forces of weight and wind.

It turns out that adult egrets weigh just 2 or 3 pounds - not enough to really challenge the juniper's strength. They regularly nest and roost in trees, building large stick platform nests above the ground. Though the adults have no predators, eggs and chicks are vulnerable to crows, jays, vultures and raccoons.

In the U.S., their normal range includes the midwestern, eastern and coastal regions, though they often wander far from regular breeding grounds. Seasonally monogamous Mama and Papa egrets take newly fledged Juniors on long journeys during their first year, sometimes visiting the river corridors of the Southwest.

High demand for ladies' hat feathers in the early 1900s had the great egret population hunted nearly to extinction. The fledgling Audubon Society made the bird its official symbol, and successfully fought for new laws that prevented over-hunting. Pollution and the destruction of wetlands are the eg ret's greatest modern threats.

I watched those birds for more than half an hour, until they disappeared in darkness. Not much in my yard commands that much attention - mule deer, jackrabbits, scrub jays and mourning doves are daily sightings - but 3-foot birds are special. I'm glad the egret family came to my yard on their Journeys with Junior - maybe they'll come to yours.