Rookery is perfect spot for viewing wading birds
Multitudes of wading birds, like great egrets and roseate spoonbills sporting spectacular breeding plumage, are nesting at Clay Bottom Pond in Houston Audubon’s Smith Oaks Sanctuary in High Island.
The birds congregate on the pond’s small treelined island, called a rookery, where they harvest sticks, twigs and pieces of plants to construct nests amidst skinny branches within the bunched-up trees.
The birds intermingle regardless of species, with perhaps a bright-white snowy egret nesting near a neotropical cormorant in shiny black plumage and near a little blue heron.
Nests, eggs and, eventually, chicks are secure from predators like coyotes thanks to pond water and menacing alligators surrounding the island’s rookery. It’s the bird version of an ancient castle with a wide moat but no bridge.
Even though peak nesting activity runs from mid-March to mid-April, great egrets, in their flowing silken-white plumes, began building nests and laying eggs in late February, even before the trees had leafed out. Flashy pink birds, appropriately called roseate spoonbills, with their broad spatulashaped beaks, were also constructing nests.
Joining the current nesting frenzy are elegantly plumed birds like tricolored herons with delicately laced slate-blue plumage on the back set off by a white underside and rust-colored neck. Gargantuan, 4-foot-tall great blue herons in smart gray-blue plumage with wispy strands of feathers flowing over the neck and back are building amazingly sturdy nests.
Many adult birds will be quietly brooding eggs beneath bodies covered in feathers spread like fine spun cloth. And when a bird like a snowy egret rises from the dedication of brooding, three shiny, blue-green eggs may be snuggled together in the nest.
Chicks will soon hatch and raise scrawny necks while holding ungainly beaks wide open as they wait for parent birds to poke food down their mouths. Others will be slumbering in the nest, looking like little puff balls.
Birds that have not yet formed mating pairs will be courting, and the courtship is a show unto itself. A handsome but gangly male roseate spoonbill, for instance,
will select a nest location and attempt to attract a nearby female by bobbing his head up and down and then shaking adjacent tree twigs in his beak.
Once a spoonbill pair has mated, they’ll press their bodies against each
other and gently touch or even slap beaks together as though hugging and kissing. Even birds know the value of touch to cement a relationship.