Driving home from today's Council hearing, I spotted two cattle egrets perching on the backs of some swede-eating sheep. I tried for a photo but all I got was sky and dirty wool.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Egrets
Driving home from today's Council hearing, I spotted two cattle egrets perching on the backs of some swede-eating sheep. I tried for a photo but all I got was sky and dirty wool.
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9 comments:
No egrets?
Some people find it hard to take when those beautiful pure looking Kotuku (Eastern Great Egret) reveal their "true" colours with some horrendous act of brutality.
Recently such an event made it to the local paper, a resident was initially amazed to see a Kotuku in her garden, until it began systematically murdering all the sparrows!, it was even captured on camera in the act!
It would spear them, flick them up in the air, roll them around a bit and swallow them whole.
Keri Hulme has a poem with a kotuku eating waxeyes, "Fishing the Olearia Tree"
Some, wildcrafty. Everybody has a few egrets. I wish I'd been more outspoken as a young man.
Can a bird 'murder' sparrows, Shunda? It's nacheril, in'it?
I watched a charming Beatrix Potter hedgehog (I'm sure it was Mrs Tiggywinkle), chawing down on a dead thrush, just outside of our lounge window. We could hear the crunching of the bones from inside.
Anyway, sparrows - mice of the sky, aren't they?
Well I don't have a problem with it but those that idealise or personify snowy white birds seem to become quite distraught!!
Personally, I was thrilled, does that make me a monster?
Perhaps another ink blot test is in order!
We have several Kotuku wintering in our estuary at present, do they head down your way?
Put on your mouse-suit, Shunda, and go out and do a kotuku-count. My readers would love to know how many of them are on your estuary :-)
We get one or two a year. They hang about the point where the Aparima river enters the Jacob's Rover estuary. I've sailed past them a few times. they just flap from one whitebaiter's stand to another as I approach. Nice to watch though.
Jacob's River
They are here pretty much all the time during winter, my brother counted 4 in the estuary near my place about a week ago, but usually you see one or two on opposite sides of the main lagoon.
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