In its final year a rangy Monterey pine continued to host the Alameda egret colony. The singularly distinctive tree leaning over the lagoon had served generations of egrets. Their tree. Their colony. The center of their universe for a few dozen egrets that returned year after year to this tree in a calm neighborhood near the center of the bustling San Francisco Bay Area.
Each year pine needles thinned revealing the egrets. In 2018, its last year there were more egrets than needles. The naked tree bloomed with egrets. What a year it was.
AWAKENING
Nearing the end of the 1918 summer with no foliage and mostly abandoned nests, a young white great egret rises like a surprise apparition. An awakening. Good things to come.
In 2019 with not even a stump showing where their tree had been, egrets returned in advance of the spring equinox as they had for perhaps 25 years, maybe 45. Would they stay? They did. Fewer in number, they chose not one tree, but all the pine trees in the grove behind where their once preferred tree had stood.
CONSORTIUM, Nesting Season, 2018. Great egrets standing in their favored but dying pine that has hosted their colony for likely decades in the heart of the Bay Area.
EGRET REGENERATION ~ The 2020 Alameda Nesting Season
The 2020 egret colony in Alameda flashed small numbers, but a big footprint. They took over a grove of trees, like they did in 2019 when they had 18 nests, each with at least two chicks, sometimes three, one seemed to have four. By early June they were at their height, by the end of June there were only a couple occupied nests. In July they were gone, a very early departure. What stood out was not so much their smaller number, but their strong visual presence speaking in imagery.
The Egrets were few in number with a strong visual presence speaking in stirring imagery.
Great Egret March 19, 2020 - one of the colony’s first arrivals.
An early arrival nesting high in the pine branches Mar 19, 2020.
Great Egret nesting high in the pine branches Mar 19, 2020.
May 8, 2020. From their nests, they look to the sky in trancelike imagery.
May 8 Great Egret suddenly vocal.
Great Egrets in neighboring nests. They are social and nests can be quite close together.
May 8 The chicks grow quickly and are showing personality.
June 6, 2020. The Snowys.
The Snowy Egrets arrived in May. There are four, mostly hidden in the foliage.
June 17, 2020. A snowy egret seen through a window in the foliage.
June 28, 2020. The colony.
June 30, 2020. Time to leave.
June 30, 2020. Last nest. The last to go.