Pat Bean's blog

 

Where the path closed
down and over,
through the scumbled leaves,
fallen branches,
through the knotted catbrier,
I kept going. Finally
I could not
save my arms
from thorns; soon
the mosquitoes

smelled me, hot
and wounded, and came
wheeling and whining.
And that’s how I came
to the edge of the pond:
black and empty
except for a spindle
of bleached reeds
at the far shore
which, as I looked,
wrinkled suddenly
into three egrets – – –
a shower
of white fire!
Even half-asleep they had
such faith in the world
that had made them – – –
tilting through the water,
unruffled, sure,
by the laws
of their faith not logic,
they opened their wings
softly and stepped
over every dark thing.

 

 

When I first became one of those crazy birders, it was easy to identify a snowy egret, which for a long time was the only egret that I saw.  They were these tall, white, graceful birds with a long, slender black bill, and black legs with golden-yellow feet, which I liked to think of as their slippers.  I saw these delightful shorebirds just about anywhere there was water when I lived in Northern Utah.

 

The next egret I saw was a shorter, chunkier one that looked like parts of its body had been dipped in liquid wheat. occasionally I would see one with a wheat-colored crest, which I learned was its breeding cap. These were cattle egret, and wandering around a herd of the four-legged critters were where you almost always found them.

 

It took me a long while before I saw a great egret in Northern Utah, although when I traveled east of the Rockies, this was suddenly the most common egret I started seeing. It’s a tall, lanky bird with a long, slender yellow bill and black legs and feet.

 

Egrets, well the snowy and the great since the cattle egret didn’t migrate to America until the 1950s, were the inspiration for the creation of the Audubon Society. The main purpose of the conservation organization, of which I’m a proud member, when it was first formed was to protect the egrets from extinction. They were being killed by the thousands simply to provide fanciful plumes for women’s hats.

 

Tsk! Tsk! I’d like to think we vain females know better these days. Most of us do, I believe.  

 

Bean’s Pat: Serenity Spell http://tinyurl.com/6wgdtdd Since it’s a bird day, read all about red-winged blackbirds.