Monkey No Climb

People like to say ‘monkey-no-climb’ because it’s such a fun name. All trees on St. John with big thorns on their trunks tend to get thrown into that category, even though there are no monkeys here.

Iguana-no-climb would make more sense as a name, since those guys seem to be climbing around everywhere. There must be some types of thorns that will deter even an iguana, despite its leathery skin and sharp claws.

I have been walking around in the woods recently to learn more about the different types of local trees - as part of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship’s Tree Appreciation Project. I can tell you it’s really creepy when you are peering up at the top of the tree trying to see what the leaves look like and a dark blob of iguana gets nervous and drops down almost of top of you.

 

 

Thorns, like claws, are a sign of power, warning you to keep your distance. They likely evolved over millions of years to provide immobile trees with defenses against large grazing animals, as well as smaller ones that might want to eat their leaves and flowers. Animals that eat the fruits, like monkeys, can actually help a tree propagate by spreading its seeds widely, though maybe the tree would prefer to have them wait until the fruit falls onto the ground.

While being careful not to get impaled during my excursions, I have identified a few different types of large trees with thorns that people might call ‘monkey-no-climb’:

 

Kapok (Ceiba pentrandra, or silk-cotton tree)

This tree is distinctive because in addition to its thorns it has impressive (sometimes huge) buttress roots as it grows older. When it flowers, it produces a soft fluffy fiber in its seed pods, which was once used as the stuffing for mattresses, and later life jackets. The flowers are smelly and open at night to attract bats as pollinators. (For the pre-Columbian Taino people, bats were associated with the spirits of the dead, so these trees were treated with great respect.) This is the most easily visible of the thorny trees - you can see examples by the road at the entrance to Caneel Bay, by the water sports shack at Cinnamon Bay, and on the Reef Bay trail. 

 

 Sandbox (Hura crepitans)

This tree is native to tropical areas of North and South America as well as the Caribbean. The ‘sandbox’ name refers to its tangerine-shaped seed capsules, which were valued in colonial times as exotic boxes for holding the sand that people used to blot the ink when they wrote letters. Despite this ‘civilized’ Victorian image, these trees tend to be hidden in forested areas on St. John and are generally not very friendly. The capsules explode loudly when they are ripe and shoot out the seeds like shrapnel – reportedly up to 300 feet at 150 miles per hour. Besides having a thick layer of sharp thorns, they also have toxic sap that was used in pre-colonial times for poisoning arrows – and later for making tear gas.      

 

White prickle (Zanthoxylum martinicense)

Native to the Caribbean and northern South America, this tree seems to thrive in higher elevations, and quickly grows very tall when it gets enough light. The thorns are largest at the base of the tree, where a grazing animal would make contact, and become smaller and sparser further up. But interestingly, it also has small thorns on the backs of its leaves that could deter upper level browsers. You can see one along the John Head Road past the Catherineberg ruins, on the right in a small turnout as you drive towards Cinnamon Bay.  

 

 Yellow prickle (Zanthoxylum monophyllum)

I only recently noticed a few of these trees, in the low-lying Fish Bay conservation land. They do not seem to have thrived there, maybe because they have gotten flooded with salty water. They are generally smaller than the related white prickles. According to Eleanor Gibney, the wood is a very attractive yellow, and the roots were formerly used to make a yellow dye. She also noted that researchers have isolated antibiotic compounds from the thorny wood. Trees protect themselves with chemicals as well as thorns, and in earlier times this one’s bark was used to treat people with colds, and as an aesthetic. 

 
For more information on the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship’s Tree Appreciation Project, you can go to the website http://uufstjohn.com/treeproject/ or the Facebook page ‘UUF Tree Appreciation Project St John VI’.

Photos by Gail Karlsson

Fish Bay Fashion Shoot

   

Little Blue Heron

The Academy Awards red carpet certainly showcased many glamorous gowns, but some St. John celebrities have their own stunning outfits – and I’m not referring to the tie-dye display at the recent Hippie Love Fest in Coral Bay (though that was truly awesome).  

Here in Fish Bay I have been stalking some reclusive style-setters that hang out around the mangroves, and recently enlisted my husband to help me search for them. We set out in our neighbor’s two-seater kayak, like seagoing paparazzi. I sat in the bow with my telephoto lens while he paddled slowly along the red mangroves at the edge of the bay.

My main goal was to get some close-ups of a group of Ruddy Turnstones I had glimpsed on the shoreline when I was kayaking alone, without my camera. We searched unsuccessfully for a while until we were distracted by a Little Blue Heron wading in the shallow water. It was more than willing to pose for us and we quietly drifted closer and closer.

During breeding season, the feathers on the necks of Little Blue Herons are a lovely shade of purple, and long ribbon-like plumes extend from their heads and necks. Our model turned for us so its plumes fluttered prettily in the breeze, though its yellow eyes were hard and cold, and its black-tipped bill turned downward.     

Soon an even flashier beauty strolled out into the bay – a Great Egret in breeding plumage. Its bright white feathers were overlaid with long delicate back plumes, called aigrettes. These plumes used to be popular for adorning fancy women’s hats, and the birds were hunted until hardly any were left alive. This one  proudly showed off its healthy vitality, with its plumes and dramatic green eye shadow highlighting its breeding status.  

Great Egret with breeding plumage

 

We finally caught up with the Ruddy Turnstones on a sandy strip of shoreline. A few weeks ago their feathers were mostly grayish, not ruddy - though their orange legs were quite flashy. Now their feathers seem to have gotten a bit redder, and their faces are beginning to develop their special breeding markings. By the time they fly off to their breeding grounds in the Arctic this summer their faces will be darkly patterned, like harlequins.

Ruddy Turnstone

 

Back on shore by the black mangrove pond, I found an old friend and neighbor who seemed to want to be included in the show. Yellow-Crowned Night Herons are always dressed for success – but rarely display the spiky crests on top of their crowns. This one gave me a high-five as well, or maybe was just showing off its smooth greenish-yellow legs and dark-tipped toes. 

 

I am very grateful to have such glamorous neighbors, especially when they are so willing to pose for my amateur photo shoots.

Got genips?

I was first introduced to genips one summer when my sons and I started helping Ken Wild with the archeological excavations at Cinnamon Bay. My older son, Kevin, was intrigued by the Taino pottery and shells revealed when the soil was carefully scraped and brushed away, and was eager to help sift the loose dirt to see if there were any beads or other treasures to be found. (The artifacts from the Cinnamon Bay site are now displayed in the museum building there.)

Meanwhile, my younger son had no patience for the work and tended to jump around too close to the pit. Ken graciously diverted him and put his abundant energy to use by asking him to climb a tall tree over near the building and bring him back some of the fruit. Always an enthusiastic climber, Brian quickly disappeared up in the tree. After a while there was some shaking in the high branches and clusters of green fruits that looked a bit like limes began dropping on the path.

 

Genip fruit     

 

Ken showed us how to split the leathery skin, pop the whole fruit in our mouths and suck on the fleshy pink pulp (which doesn’t easily come off the seed). The seed is so big it takes up most of the space inside. The pulp is pretty tart, but sort of sweet too.

 

Genip fruit, pulp and seed              

 

It is likely that genip fruits, which are native to South America, were brought to the islands by pre-Columbian settlers. Besides sucking the pulp, they roasted the seeds to eat like nuts, and also used the juice as a dye.

Mature genip trees can grow up to 100 feet tall, though most of the ones here are not that big. They have smooth, grayish bark which is often blotchy-looking because it is mottled with lichen.

 

Genip tree by Catherineberg ruins with distinctive markings 

 

Eleanor Gibney noted that genip trees tend to live a long time. Some on St. John may even be 500 years old, dating back to Taino times. Many of the ones she climbed as a child are still around and remain relatively unchanged.

The overall number of genip trees on St. John has been increasing though. They have spread widely because their seeds are dispersed by birds and bats, as well as people spitting out seeds, and because they can survive in droughts and a variety of salty, windy ecological conditions. In parts of the island these trees have invaded the remaining areas of diverse native forest, crowding out other growth with their abundant saplings.

Cheryl Magdaleno, who has been participating in the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship’s Tree Appreciation Project, recently showed me how to identify a genip by its leaf structure. It has four leaflets arranged in two pairs on a stalk that attaches to the tree. Along the stalk she pointed out distinctive thin leaf-like structures – like wings. I was very excited to learn about the leaves, since the method of trying to identify genip trees by looking for mottled bark was not working very well for me.

 

Young genip leaf showing 'wings' on the leaf stalk 

  

I recently mentioned this information about genip leaves to Jessa Buchalter, including the part about the wings. She promptly went to a tree by her family’s house and came back with a bunch of genip fruits, along with some of the leaves from that tree. They were definitely not winged.  Maybe the leaf wings help young trees get started, while the older fruiting trees don’t need them anymore.

Like papayas, genips have male and female trees. Male flowers producing pollen and female flowers producing seeds generally grow on different genip trees. This is somewhat unusual - most types of trees with sexual reproduction either have both male and female flowers on the same tree, or flowers containing both male and female parts.

One advantage of having male and female flowers on different trees is that it ensures cross-pollination and increases genetic diversity. But what if there aren’t enough trees of the opposite sex in the neighborhood? I worry about that when I look at my lonely young papaya tree, but the genips don’t seem to be suffering from social isolation. Also bees are attracted to their flowers and can travel pretty far as they search for sweet nectar.

Ordinarily genip trees flower between April and June, and produce fruit in the summer. Some trees are fruiting now though. Most likely that they were affected by last year’s drought and delayed their flowering until after the November rains. So we got genips this winter.   

Adelaide’s Warblers Thrill St. John



With so many talented artists performing on St. John during the winter season, you can be out almost every night rocking and rolling. 

 

Adelaide's warbler by Lameshur Bay
Photo Richard Veit

Now a new Latin group performing on St. John’s south shore is causing quite a stir. They are called Adelaide’s Warblers, but back home in Puerto Rico their group is the Reinita Mariposeras (which loosely translates into ‘Little Queen Butterfly Hunters’). Not very macho, but I heard they were flashy looking and knew a lot of sweet songs so my friend Kathy and I drove out to Lameshur Bay to catch their act. 

 

Okay, they were just little birds but very handsome and good singers, so we were happy we made the trip. We did have to hike out into the forest a little way past Little Lameshur Bay beach on the path towards Reef Bay. It is lovely out there, but it’s not a good venue for the late night crowd – which is okay because the birds do most of their singing from mid-morning to early afternoon.

One of the common male songs is a long loud trill increasing in pitch. We could hear it from a distance up the hill before we saw a couple of birds flitting back and forth across the path.

The interesting thing about these warblers is that until recently they were only found on Puerto Rico and Vieques. Now they seem to be settling in the Virgin Islands as well. I heard about these guys from Professor Richard Veit who frequently does research at VIERS, the Virgin Islands Environmental Resource Stations at Lameshur. He is a professor from the College of Staten Island and the City University of New York Graduate Center.

The Adelaide’s Warblers were first observed on St. Thomas in 2012. Last January Professor Veit and his colleagues found five of them on St. John near Lameshur, including at least three different singing males that appeared to be vigorously defending breeding territories. This January they counted eight. Seems like the band is expanding.

There are some familiar St. John residents also performing in the same area – including Bananaquits and Yellow Warblers. Though they may show you a flash of yellow as they flit past, up close these birds sound and look quite different.  

 

Yellow warbler      Photo Gail Karlsson
 

Bananaquit               Photo Gail Karlsson

 The song of the Yellow Warbler is commonly described as “sweet, sweet, I’m so sweet”, while the Bananaquit keeps repeating “tseet, tseet, tseet” which is not very melodic. 

If you don’t make it to Lameshur, you can check out some of the trilling tunes of the Adelaide’s Warblers at this website: http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Setophaga-adelaidae.

 

 

 

Mixed Up About Manchineel?

 

The most famous sign on St. John is probably the ominous red board on the road to Annaberg that says “Warning! Manchineel Tree.”

 

 

According to the sign, Christopher Columbus described its small green fruits as “death apples.” Diego Alvarez Chanca, a Spanish doctor who sailed with him in 1493, noted that: “There were wild fruits of various kinds, some of which our men, not very prudently, tasted; and on only touching them with their tongues, their mouths and cheeks became swollen, and they suffered such a great heat and pain.”

 

Its sap is very caustic as well, and was reportedly used by the Caribs to poison their arrows. The Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon is said to have suffered a long and painful death in 1521 after being hit by one of those poisoned arrows when he attempted to occupy territory in what is now Florida. 

 

Given this history, you would think that everyone would learn what this tree and its death apples look like. Sadly, that is not so.

 

I recently heard that a small child took a bite from one of the little apples and suffered a sore mouth and swollen throat as a result. The fruit tastes sweet at first, and then quickly you start to feel the burn. Usually the symptoms go away after a few painful hours, especially if the person spits it out right away rather than swallowing it.

 

My friend Suki Buchalter, who is working with me on the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship’s tree identification project, suggested that we should help tell people how to recognize manchineel trees, because they grow other places on St. John than on the Annaberg Road and those are not marked. One thing she was concerned about was that some people were being told that the manchineel has heart-shaped leaves – which is not right. My husband said he had heard that also.



Manchineel leaf



Maho leaf

 

 

 

I carefully picked a few of the fruits that had fallen around the tree. Some were from the maho and some were manchineel apples. Even on the ground they looked similar if the maho fruits were lying butt up, though the maho fruit is not round if you see it from the stem side.

 

Manchineel apple on left, maho fruit on right



Manchineel apple on left, maho fruit on right

 

When I got home I realized that the manchineel apples in my specimen bag looked just like a fruit I had picked up a few days before on the shoreline near my house. I had never seen fruit on the ground there before, so I took one home. All I could see in the area were maho trees and red mangroves. I thought maybe it could be a maho fruit that gotten soft and round, since at that point I had never really examined a ripe one close up.
 

There was the little green fruit sitting on the counter when I got back from Annaberg. Now I could see that it was definitely a manchineel apple. 

 

Warning my husband not to bite into any of my specimens, I went back on the shoreline trail by my house and saw what I decided was the trunk of a manchineel tree. I still couldn’t make out any leaves, or fruit on the tree, because it was so tall and obscured by the nearby maho trees. Later I went back and put a sign on the tree warning other people not to pick up the fruit lying on the ground. 

     

 

 









 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 






             

 





 

 

With eBird, Every Day Can Be a Bird Count Day



Year round residents  - Brown pelican and brown booby in Leinster Bay
Photo Gail Karlsson 

It sounds pretty geeky to post your bird sightings on the internet, but I recently decided to give it a try. It turns out to be a pretty special and relatively easy way for ordinary nature lovers to make a contribution as citizen scientists.   

One reason I decided to try eBird was because I was disappointed to be missing the Audubon Society’s annual Christmas bird count. It’s always fun to spend a morning roaming around the neighborhood marking down the birds you can identify on the VI checklist.

All the Christmas bird count reports collected from St. John, and everywhere around the US, are sent to the National Audubon Society and used to help scientists track long-term population numbers and migration trends. This information is important for conservation efforts as well as scientific research.  

I often go on the Friday morning bird walks around Francis Bay led by National Park Service ranger Laurel Brannick to see what types of birds come to St. John at different times of the year. When I told her I would be away on the official Christmas bird count day this year, she suggested that I do my counting early, before I left town, and post the results on eBird.

I usually find the idea of ‘e’ or ‘i’ anything pretty daunting, but I was also interested in trying out eBird because I recently saw a presentation by a representative of the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology who was involved in developing it. He is currently working on tracking annual migrations using millions of bird sighting reports posted by volunteers across the country. He cross-references their data about where specific birds are being seen with radar images that indicate mass movements of birds, and sound recordings of the nighttime flight calls of migratory birds. This sophisticated merging of different information sources means it’s becoming a lot easier to find out about the seasonal movements and ranges of different birds.  

My interest in bird migration has so far been pretty much focused on identifying local versus transitory herons and egrets in the Virgin Islands. I have wondered if any of the birds I see in the northeast over the summer wind up in the Caribbean, and got excited about using eBird to explore the Virgin Islands database of sightings.  

But when I looked on eBird, I found that there wasn’t actually all that much data specifically about St. John.  

Now I’m thinking it would be great if more bird watchers in different areas of St. John could take the time and make the effort to figure out how to use eBird too, so we (and people who are visiting ) can have a better idea about which birds are coming and going, or staying put.

 

Here’s how to get started:

 

Go to eBird.org

Click on Submit Observations

Create an account – name and password

Identify a location for your observations. Enter VI in the box and a map will come up. Use the map to choose an existing site on St John. Or you can create a new one by clicking on the magnifying glass icon, moving it to your spot and clicking, and then naming the spot.

​Check off 'how' you went birding - walking a trail, sitting in one place, etc – and the time and duration.

Use the checklist page provided to report the types and numbers of birds you are confident you saw or heard. If you can't find the species you're looking for on the checklist, use the 'Add a species' box.

Add a photo or confirming info if asked to. The checklist is monitored by regional experts, and if a sighting seems unusual they may request additional info

Check off whether or not it is a complete list of all the birds you observed. It is much more useful if you put in all the birds you could identify rather than just the unusual ones. 

 

Fall migrants in Fish Bay - short-billed dowitcher and lesser yellowlegs
Photo Gail Karlsson  

 

 

A Blizzard of Butterflies



How lovely to go for a walk accompanied by a magical fluttering of yellowish-white butterflies. It is enough to make anyone feel like a Disney princess, or like Bambi exploring a technicolor forest.

 

In other years there have sometimes been sudden butterfly hatchings, but I have never seen so many, or for so long. It seems that when the heavy November rains broke our six month drought and trees were able to grow new leaves, that in turn created unusually favorable conditions for butterfly eggs to develop into caterpillars that could grow and thrive and produce an abundance of butterflies.     



Cluster of Great Southern White butterflies in Fish Bay  Photo Gail Karlsson

 Although there are several similar types of butterflies around, the ones I have been seeing the most are Great Southern Whites. You can tell because they have distinctive turquoise tips on their antennas. 


Close-up of Great Southern White on a branch

Photo Gail Karlsson

The Great Southern Whites are not special to the Virgin Islands. They are also common throughout the southern United States, South America and the Caribbean. Other Caribbean islands have reported mass hatchings this season as well.   

In the Virgin Islands, the Great Southern Whites tend to use the numerous, local limber caper trees as hosts. The females attach clusters of about 20 tiny torpedo-shaped eggs to the leaves of the tree – potentially producing up to 500 eggs each. When conditions are right, the eggs develop into caterpillars with black spots, dark hairs, and yellow stripes running lengthwise along their backs - much smaller than the well-known frangipani caterpillar. After two or three weeks of feeding on leaves, the caterpillar will transform into a chrysalis with a hard shell, usually hanging inconspicuously on the tree. After a week or so the chrysalis bursts open and the butterfly emerges. All in all, it is an amazingly complex process.   

Butterflies mostly suck nectar from flowers, using a long proboscis that they can extend and insert into the flowers. They are important pollinators for many plants, transferring pollen from one flower to another as they flit about.

The Great Southern Whites also seem to be social drinkers. I have often seen them gathering in groups along on our dirt road, apparently getting together to drink and draw minerals from the wet spots – an activity known as ‘puddling’.

Great Southern Whites puddling in the dirt road
Photo Gail Karlsson

 

Unfortunately these butterflies have a short life span. While they are here, they bring great joy to people on St. John, and we can hope for another big batch of them again – if all the eggs these ones lay are able to hatch, and there are enough leaves for the hungry caterpillars to eat, as well as nectar-filled flowers for the next generation of emerging butterflies.

 

 

 



War on Tan-tans?

Headline News:
Trump to Tan-tans “Go Back to Mexico!”
“They’re ugly, they don’t belong here, and they’re crowding out valuable native trees. They have no pretty flowers or tasty fruit, and they’re un-American. Let’s root them out now!”

Tan-tan (False tamarind)
Photo Gail Karlsson

Well, not really, though it does seem like if he knew about these invasive aliens, Trump would want to send them back across the border.  

It is true that St. John residents have been complaining about all the tan-tan trees sprouting up around the island after the abundant November rains. Known formally as Leucaena leucocephala, they are also called ‘false tamarinds’, as they slightly resemble (and may try to pass for) these ‘real’ trees. They seek out areas where the land is disturbed and spread their seeds widely, waiting for opportunities to take over new territory.   

The tan-tans were able to wait out the recent six month drought that brought down even some usually hardy native trees, and then sprang up with a vengeance when the heavens opened up in November. Once they put down their deep tap roots, it is extremely difficult to eradicate them. You cut them down but they keep on growing back. 

Local tree expert and historian Eleanor Gibney (though by no means a tan-tan supporter) reported that they were actually introduced to the Virgin Islands intentionally for an important purpose. During the mid-1800s there were a couple of thousand cows on St. John and the ranchers brought in the tan-tans as a fast-growing source of forage fodder. Some sources indicate that the trees probably came from coastal Mexico or Central America. Those deep tap roots allow them to survive the dry season, and to spring back to life after being chomped and stomped on by careless cattle. Some people still gather tan-tan branches to feed their goats, but mostly these trees are now viewed as undesirable aliens.    

Unfortunately, it would be too difficult to actually send all the tan-tans back to Mexico. More likely people will ramp up attacks on them using machetes, Round-Up and diesel fuel.     

Extermination efforts can lead to collateral damage, however, as many people have difficulty distinguishing between tan-tans and other similar-looking trees – including the amarat, a key hardwood species from the original Virgin Islands forests. Teaching people to distinguish these trees would help prevent indiscriminate damage to native hardwoods.  

The St. John Unitarian Universalist Fellowship’s Green Sanctuary Committee has recently started a project to raise awareness about the different types of trees commonly seen on St. John.

 

Anyone interested in learning more about local trees, whether native, naturalized or invasive, can connect with the project through its Facebook page UUF Tree Appreciation Project St. John VI, and website http://uufstjohn.com/treeproject/about/.

 

 

Can you identify these trees with leaves that are somewhat similar to tan-tans?

A.

 

 



B.

C.



Answers:
A. Tamarind
B. Amarat
C. Acacia

Snow Bird or Born Here?

Great egret hunting lizards in my yard
Photo Gail Karlsson

 

It’s not always so easy to tell the difference.

 

This is the time of year when seasonal migrants – birds and people – start showing up in the Caribbean. Many only stay for a brief stopover and then move on, but a certain number of regulars settle in for the winter, filling local beaches and watering holes and acting like they belong here.

Some permanent residents welcome the influx, while others wish the migrants would just stay where they were and leave the islands to the locals.

Of course it is sometimes difficult to distinguish locals from part-timers – at least among the herons and egrets.

 
In the ponds near my house on St. John I see great egrets, snowy egrets, and cattle egrets, as well as black-crowned and yellow-crowned night herons, green herons, great blue herons, and little blue herons. None of these are special types of birds that live only in the tropics. They can be found all along the east coast of the US, and lots of other places as well. But some of these birds are actually full-time residents of the Virgin Islands. How can you tell?

 Herons and egrets that breed in the northeast US during the spring generally move south in the fall, and a few might pass through or even end up in the Virgin Islands. Birds in warmer southern states don’t migrate in the same way. In the Caribbean, as well, some of the birds stay around all year, raising their young on island time. Their breeding schedule is linked to the wet and dry seasons that affect the availability of food here, rather than northern temperatures and ecological cycles. 

Raffaele’s book Birds of the West Indies identifies a number of birds in the heron/egret family as “common residents” that live and breed here: snowy egrets and cattle egrets, green and little blue herons, and yellow-crowned night herons.

Great egrets are considered “uncommon residents” in the Caribbean.

Last fall I saw flocks of great egrets gathering in Jamaica Bay in New York City at the end of September, and then one day in early October woke up to find a bunch of them sitting in the trees around the pond by my house in Fish Bay. It seemed like we were on the same flight path.

 

Photo Gail Karlsson

After a few days most of the great egrets were gone, but a couple seemed to be fishing in the pond all winter. Were they on St. John all along, or did one pair of migrants settle down in the neighborhood for the season?

 

Great egret couple in Fish Bay pond
Photo Gail Karlsson

You would definitely be sure that an egret is living on St. John if you could find its nest. Up north, I have seen large numbers of nests all built close together in one or two trees, since there herons and egrets usually breed in colonies in the spring and stick together for protection. An ‘uncommon resident’ couple might end up nesting alone though, and at a different time of year. I have gone around looking for great egret nests in marshy areas of St. John, so far without success. If they are here, they are pretty well hidden. 

There is another indication, though, that a great egret is a resident: if you see breeding plumage. I have definitely seen birds in the pond with the long, lacy breeding feathers that are called aigrettes. (These plumes became popular for decorating ladies’ hats in the late nineteenth century, and during that time egrets were hunted almost to the point of extinction.) 

 

Photo Gail Karlsson



So I do think at least some of the great egrets I see are permanent residents. Others, like me, travel back and forth, attracted to the warmth of the tropics, but not content to stay in one place all year. As Joni Mitchell wrote: “They got the urge for going, and they got the wings so they can go.”