As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Friday 8 March 2019

How a colony of egrets made Miami’s inner city its winter home





FEBRUARY 19, 2019 07:00 AM,
UPDATED FEBRUARY 19, 2019 08:40 AM

Beneath stacks of highway overpasses, hard by a county jail, inside barbed-wire fencing and perched above a concrete-colored pond, it’s a sight for sore eyes: Egrets. A couple of hundred egrets, impossibly white against the dingy landscape, as if they were dipped in fluffy clouds on their flight down from the sky.

They have found a winter home in Miami’s inner city. True snowbirds, they’re staying at a green condo of bushes just north of Northwest 14th Street between Northwest Seventh Avenue and I-95, on vacant Florida Department of Transportation land dotted with royal palms, oaks and ceiba trees. Discarded McDonald’s wrappers, Doritos bags, coffee cups, cigarette butts, shoes, sweatshirts and bedsheets have collected against the surrounding fences. Traffic zooms overhead and the loud noise bounces off large support columns sunk into the water.

“It’s like an oasis for them,” said Alex Gomez, a cook walking to work. “It’s the closest thing to a swamp around here.”


No comments:

Post a Comment