Cattle Egret at the Santa Rosa Rookery

The rookery in Santa Rosa is a fascinating place. The elegant parents flying overhead at times can seem almost angelic.

If the smells and constant noise don’t bring you back to earth, though, a close look a the fledglings waiting to be fed will.

It might be one thing to have a single fledgling to feed,

but this Cattle Egret had five or six to feed, and they were all clearly desperate for food. This one was so eager that it nearly took its parent’s

head off.

On a later visit, with no parent in sight these two chicks seemed to be looking for food from a sibling.

Two visits in two days isn’t nearly long enough to know what is actually going on in the rookery or figure out where they are getting the food to feed these fledglings in the middle of Santa Rosa, but it is long enough to raise new questions to consider in future visits.

2 thoughts on “Cattle Egret at the Santa Rosa Rookery”

  1. Wonderful photos. Well except for the photo of the fledgling biting its parent’s head off. Yikes. That’s pretty brutal. There is a Great Egret rookery that we see whenever we drive the seven miles to Eureka. It’s in the top of several trees on an island in the Humboldt Bay. There’s no way to stop and take photos of it, but we can see at least a hundred Egret in the trees during nesting season. Quite a sight. It’s grand that you are able to photograph the rookery there.

  2. Supposedly Cattle Egrets were introduced into North America by following the slave and cattle boats over from Africa.

    Whenever I see an egret, I think of the slaves who saw them and thought of home.

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