“I remember everything, things I can’t forget…” – from the song I Remember Everything by John Prine
In our small Macomb backyard, under warm Indian Summer breezes and falling leaves, I looked beyond the overhead electrical wires into the unblemished blue sky, thinking about great egrets. (Egrets are large [39 inches from bill tip to tail tip] long-legged, pure white birds usually seen only in wetlands or near lake shores or river banks.) I was thinking about them because they seemed so remote from my urban surroundings; even a flyover would be unlikely; they also reminded me of some of my favorite wild places, from which, at that moment, I was far removed. Comforting images among the sound of leaf blowers and mulching mowers.
Great egret at Shem Creek Park, South Carolina, 2019
I saw my first great egret in 1984 at a small wetland near Chicago. I was back at home in Berwyn, a Chicago suburb, after living two years in southern Illinois. Never wanting to move back, I preferred the small university town of Carbondale near the forested Shawnee Hills; but this decision was forced by personal finances, of which there was not much, with only slight improvements on the horizon (the classic boomerang trajectory). Living in the attic again, with its low, sloping ceiling and one small window, I missed the openness and abundant public lands of southern Illinois. And so I was often drawn to the Cook County Forest Preserves, most of which were kept in a natural state with only minimal management focused on maintaining specific habitats such as prairie, open oak woodlands, or wetlands. There were many official and unofficial trails, and I soon had a favored route.
Mostly I followed an unmarked game trail heavily used by the preserve’s abundant white-tailed deer population, and rarely did I encounter people, as most folks gathered near the picnic shelters or stayed on the marked trail system. So I was rather startled early one morning, when I thought no one else was around, to hear a man, only a few feet away, say, “Did you see the crane? I see him here all the time.” “No,” I curtly replied. I never saw the man until he spoke up, so I was immediately on my guard, much as I would be if similarly approached in a dark Chicago alley. The “crane” stood in the shallows of a marsh, just on the edge of open water. I took a quick look at the bird and then quickly continued on my way, thinking that in the future I would need to pay more attention to surroundings, even on a remote trail; this was Cook County, after all.
Later on, I looked up the “crane” in a field guide and saw that it was, in fact, not a crane, but a great egret. At the time, I was only beginning to learn how to identify birds, and I was quite excited at seeing what seemed like a rare species. That excitement stayed with me throughout the summer as I encountered many other bird species for the first time, and I had a feeling that I was on the cusp of a major life change; I see now that there was my life before becoming a birder and another more fulfilling, questioning, and aware life thereafter.
Yet simply keeping track of the birds that I saw (the very basic definition of a birder) would not have sustained my interest for very long. The aesthetic aspect of birds is, of course, highly appealing; and many times, especially in recent years, I will watch birds simply because they are beautiful and they make me feel good. But what has really kept my interest has been trying to understand each species’ relationship to its habitat, and this necessarily requires watching and interpreting behavior, sometimes in detail for long periods.
Our cabin along the Illinois River bluffs provides the perfect setting for serious birding; there is an expansive view of the three-mile-wide river valley and access to Quiver Lake, a large backwater connected to the river and adjacent to Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge. From my perspective, once living in a big city and now in a small town, the river valley is a wilderness, and my access is through the cabin. It’s where I can sit for hours on end to see the day unfold, to consider meanings.
From April to October, great egrets are fairly common at Quiver Lake, depending upon what the river is doing. During floods, there is often little shallow water for them to slowly stalk prey (small fish), and the egrets must fly elsewhere in search of appropriate wetland habitats. Sometimes even the forests are flooded. But during other times, especially in August and September when the river is usually at its lowest levels, much of upper Quiver Lake, near the cabin and Chautauqua Refuge, is a series of mudflats with several shallow streams of water fed by Quiver Creek near the refuge boundary. Fish are then easy to spot and catch in the shallow waters, and this attracts great egrets and many other large fish-eating birds such as great blue herons, snowy egrets, ring-billed gulls, Caspian terns, and American white pelicans in deeper water. And, of course, the mud flats usually attract shorebirds from a variety of species.
Quiver Lake at low water, showing mud flats and seeps
When conditions are just right and the river valley is teaming with birds, I’ll bring a folding chair down to the lakeside, which is lined with seeps of pure groundwater gently flowing into countless tiny channels from the sandy bluff side bottom into the muddy lake bed. Through a spotting telescope, I’ll pick out a single bird to watch until my attention inevitably begins to dissipate or my eyes begin to strain. There is always a reward, from the dramatic scene of an osprey diving into the water, emerging with a fish in its talons, to a small nugget of information on how an egret swallows a fish larger than its own head. In my field notes on September 22, 2020, I wrote the following: The egret struggled to position the fish (a gizzard shad about 6 to 8 inches long) correctly so that it could swallow, and even dropped it a few times in the water, but quickly retrieving it each time. Eventually through sheer persistence, the egret flipped its head and neck in just the right way, and the fish moved right into its beak and down its throat. Here the neck muscles took over, and I could see the bulge in the egret’s neck, caused by the fish, slowly move downward. In doing this, it took frequent sips of water to help move the fish downward. I fully expected the egret to give up, as the shad simply seemed too big to swallow; and then, after the fish had actually entered its throat, I expected the bird to choke. But it never showed any sign of distress or impatience, obviously having successfully performed such an act many times before.
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Soon after that warm November day in my urban backyard, when I was connecting to wild areas through thoughts of the great egret, I returned to the cabin, knowing that within a few days I would have to close it down for the winter. But so far the warm weather had continued, and it truly felt like summer again; I was beginning to forget about the coming cold weather, even though fall colors reminded me otherwise. The river had stayed low; mud flats were still there; and quite a few shorebirds were still around, but I could find no great egrets. They had gone south for the year, and I probably would not see another one until April of the following year, which seemed so far away. How would the world change between now and then? I hoped that changes would be for the better, but for this year, at least, most trends were going in the other direction.
Later in the day, just after sundown, when the dark forest trees on the other side of Quiver Lake stood in contrast against the yellow-and-orange glare of the western sky, two great horned owls called. One of the owls then flew to a nearby tree, and was soon followed by the other owl from across the lake. I took this to be a positive sign for the future, and thought about my first great horned owl over thirty-five years ago, not far from that first great egret. My mind became filled with images, as if I had forgotten not one detail over the years. Powerful memories they were. And I was transported in time and place.
Quiver Lake just after sundown, November 6, 2020