Near me, in the middle of town, is a tiny city lake with a tiny island, on which egrets nest. They nest in some of the trees around the lake, too, to the great annoyance of the local businesses and others nearby. Although disturbing the egrets is illegal, many skirt the law.
The city fires off its public fireworks display at that lake.
Apparently some egrets were roosting near a couple transformers. The fireworks startled the egrets and some flew into the transformers, shorting the transformers out, plunging a 2 km diameter circle into darkness, including part of downtown.
Power will return about midnight if all goes well.
In cities around the world, anti-bird spikes are used to protect statues and balconies from unwanted birds - but now, it appears the birds are getting their own back. Dutch researchers have found that some birds use the spikes as weapons around their nests - using them to keep pests away in the same way that humans do…
Birds often use thorny branches to protect their nests, but humans aren’t fans of these kinds of bushes and trees, so birds living in built up areas go for the next best thing, Mr Hiemstra says.
The local egret rookery was this year, 2023, again disturbed by 4th July city fireworks.
After the 15 minutes display, hundreds to a couple thousand white birds, lit from below by the city light pollution, wheeled and turned in the dark sky. These egrets have about a 3 foot wing span. It was really kind of impressive. I suspect few people saw it, and thought about the ramifications, though.
A couple days later, I passed the park at 7am. The small island and a hectare area on the east shore was covered with roosting egrets. The shore around the tiny lake is recreational area. Bleachers up on which the egrets sit/roost. A ball field.
The egrets poop all over everything.
I think that the local JCs will find a way to get rid of the egrets.
