Cattle egrets in cecropia tree/Mary Farmer
By taking all sorts of fascinating pix, Mary is making my blogging life a lot easier! Why should I stir myself when she does such a great job?
I thought this photo was just perfect. Look at that stupendously gorgeous tropical sky!! That’s the beauty of the rain–afterwards, you get this marvelously clear sky, even better than on postcards! And I don’t knock postcards. Whenever I go to any popular scenic site, I always buy postcards because inevitably, professionals take better pictures than I do. And many, many years ago, someone tipped me off to the fact that it’s a wonderful way of remembering a trip–just a few words on the back of a postcard to remind you of what it was you saw and did. Naturally, I did that for a while, then, of course–forgot.
These cattle egrets have settled in for a bath and pedicure, no doubt, in one of the tall cecropia trees behind our house. It’s a flock of 20-30, far more than we usually see at one time. BUT we do see them every day. There seems to be one flock of about 5-8 that flies sedately from south to north over our place at about 8:30 every morning, and returns south in the late afternoon. Not surprising, since we have a cattle ranch behind us. But they are so regular, and so stately, that I have from the beginning instinctively thought of them as commuters; the only thing missing is a copy of La Prensa.
What also interest me is where you find them. For example, for some years we had bird-watching acquaintances in Boquete, who told me that they almost never saw cattle egrets–that it was years before they saw their first. They’re so common here (cattle country) that it just astonished me. There are a few cattle ranches near Boquete, but they’re probably tucked out of sight of the pueblo itself. But it does intrigue me–is there an altitude barrier, for example? I have to ask Carla Black (if I remember) if cattle egrets are common in Volcan, which is much higher than Boquete. There are a lot of dairy farms there, so it’s a good test. For all the times we’ve driven to Volcan, I don’t remember seeing cattle egrets, but for me they are now part of the landscape and if I did see them, that would not be a remarkable sight, one to remember.
But I do enjoy our egret friends–it’s one of those sights that always brings a smile, even though I’ve seen them flying overhead literally hundreds of times.
Filed under: Potrerillos Arriba, birds
