The Birds are Back & Community is Back!
By Tom & Carol Braford
I heard Carol shouting and quickly ran down to the 2nd floor to see what was the matter. She said, “Look! Look! They’re back!” She was pointing to a couple dozen Great White Egrets perching where they nested last year in the tallest trees a block to the north, just behind the Chapel at the old St. Bonaventure Friary. We had seen a couple of them for a while a couple weeks earlier and then no sign of them for a full week, then two pairs and again no sign for another week. We had almost given up hope!
They look huge even from a block away, but we had a real treat when we pulled up the other morning in front of our house and found a pair gathering dead branches for their nests from the top of the maple tree in our front yard. Then later, another one was extracting a four foot long piece of wild grape vine from a pile of brush I had been gathering in the side yard.
Now the question is if and when the snowy egrets, the small blue herons and the night herons will arrive? Even with their stretched out return, this is the earliest arrival for the Great Whites in their now eight year history with us, and we continue to push for a greenway with water features on vacant land from Bonaventure to the main SLU campus to keep them coming back.
Likewise, our questions now are how many and which ones of the old familiar birds of our species will still choose to nest with us now that we relaunched our Ecovillage projects on Earth Day, and will there be new birds of quite a different feather, like the dozens of highly energetic grackles with a sprinkling of doves, robins and cardinals that have now taken up residence in the bamboo thicket just outside our main entrance?
I hope we have lots of both, and to make sure that happens and that this is the launch that sticks for the returning old guard and new guard alike, we invite you to fill out the survey on our website, www.ArizmendiEcovillage.com, and especially the final question, ‘Where is love in all of this?’ You can also reach us directly at braford@sbcglobal.net.