10h • General discussion
No egrets? None at all?
The common egrets showed up in numbers this morning at our marsh. We haven't had many so far this year. The occasional white shape shows up across the wetland. But today there were seven. One of them flew over carrying a stick, likely back to the rookery about four miles west of us in a forest preserve on Main Street near Route 47.
Fifty years ago when I started birding, egrets were not common. Finding one each spring or summer was a thrill. I recall sneaking up for fifty yards at the north end of Nelson Lake Marsh to get a fuzzy picture with my Pentax and a 50-300MM lens. I'd have surely loved the Canon and Sigma camera equipment I own today. It would have been life-changing having the ability to get great reference photography of my own on which to base my paintings.
To do paintings back then, I pored through bird books assembling angles and knowledge to the best of my ability. Most of my painted images were strained attempts to capture what I'd seen in the wild. Lacking a photographic memory, I drew countless sketches in my drawing pads trying to work out the anatomy, which I often averaged out so that the birds never looked quite right.
Yet I have no ragrats. I mean, no regrets. I did the best I could with the resources I had. No ragrats at al. But I sure love seeing more egrets these days.
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No egrets? None at all?
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Birding expert and wildlife artist Christopher Cudworth brings birding to life
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