THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508130280
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 161 lines
THREE OR FOUR great egrets strolling around the yard are pretty - and interesting to watch.
But 200 pairs and all their offspring living in nests overhead are something else.
Ask the residents of Lynn Drive, a cozy waterfront neighborhood tucked away in the middle of the city.
``You need an umbrella to walk in our yard,'' Kathleen Culpepper said. ``And the droppings are acidic, so they kill the grass and dogwoods and shrubbery.''
The colony of great egrets took up residence in the tops of tall pine trees in the yards of several homes at the Lynn Road cul-de-sac last March and April.
For the past four or five months, the birds have abused the hospitality of the people who only a few years ago had nothing but admiration for the handsome birds that stopped briefly at their waterfront neighborhood.
``They're noisy too when there are so many of them,'' Culpepper said.
Their screechy voices make a nerve-wracking cacophony that breaks the peaceful silence of the waterfront.
But the droppings that ruin paint jobs and landscaping and the noise aren't the only problem.
The smell from dead fledglings that fall out of the trees and from scraps of seafood dropped as mamas feed their young became unbearable, Culpepper said.
That's when a neighbor called the city's Public Health Department.
``They're not a health hazard,'' said Milt Bruner, the department's environmental health manager. ``It would take a number of years of heavy accumulation of droppings and carcasses to become a hazard.''
However, Bruner said, he was concerned about the agitation the egrets were causing in the neighborhood.
``We decided to do what we could to help,'' he said. ``We got the state and federal agencies involved.''
In addition, when the fatalities of the young birds reached a critical stage, the health department enlisted the city's Animal Control Department to haul off the carcasses.
Keith Cline, a biologist with the state's Game and Inland Fisheries Department in Northern Virginia, said the young ones fall out of the nests very easily.
``They build very small, shallow nests,'' he said.
And they go to the tops of very tall pines trees, so when a very young bird falls, he is likely to die on impact with the solid ground.
Loblolly pines, 100 years or older, are most likely to attract the birds, according to Bryan Watts, an avian ecologist at the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary.
``They nest two ways - in the pine trees and on dead trees in wetlands,'' Watts said. ``They eat eels and small fish, but not game fish.''
The colony in residence on Lynn Drive is known by Watts as ``the Sparrow Road Colony.'' He and his colleagues have been watching the colony for almost a decade.
The birds have been known to residents of various neighborhoods since the folks on East Sparrow Road in Chesapeake reported them in the early 1960s. Over several years, the colony moved one or two streets at a time as residents got after them.
From that area off Military Highway, they went to Winston Road in Portsmouth's Pinehurst section across the river from Lynn Shores.
Since the great egret is protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, humans are limited as to the times and methods they can use to try to move them out.
``You can't kill them, take their nests or their eggs,'' he said.
People may use pyrotechnic guns and water hoses to try to drive them out. But they must have a federal permit, and they must try to scare them away only before they start nesting.
``It's a no-win thing,'' Bryan said. ``There is almost no solution. You run them from one place to another.''
In one area, residents cut down their oldest, tallest pine trees. The birds just moved nearby.
In fact, he said, the pattern of moving just a few streets away ``creates animosities'' among people in the same neighborhood, because the people at the new nesting grounds know that the people nearby have succeeded in evicting the birds.
Bryan said setting aside land with appropriate trees so far has not worked.
You can't force them or entice them, he said.
In the late 1980s, the William and Mary group tried putting some artificial nests at the Little Creek Amphibious Base, away from anybody or anything.
Some people have taped egret calls for lures and others have placed decoys in trees with the hope of attracting the great egrets to isolated pine trees or wetlands.
``The birds ignored them all,'' he said.
Great egrets tolerate human beings very well, he said, while great blue herons don't like people at all.
Great egrets are increasing and they are becoming more concentrated.
``Several years ago, there were six or seven rivers that attracted the great egrets, but as development occurs, they have lost their sites,'' he said.
In this area, other colonies are nesting on Eleanor Court near Old Dominion University and another has been in the Thoroughgood area of Virginia Beach for about 50 years.
Nobody knows, Cline said, why the birds will pick one place and not another.
``They need water and large old pine trees,'' he said. But, he added, they skip some places that fit the description of their nesting habitats.
Full-grown great egrets stand at 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall, the largest of the species except for the great blue heron, which grows taller.
When the birds leave here this month, they will head for the Gulf States and then to the Caribbean.
The great egrets are still plentiful on Lynn Drive, but they are beginning to thin out as the fledglings get old enough to move on.
Some of the birds now are roosting closer to their food. An old barge and other places offshore near Lynn Drive have attracted some of them, Cline said.
``Some of the young will roost there together,'' he said.
Chances are, they'll be back in the Lynn Road trees come spring.
The residents will get help from Cline's office and Bryan's group to deal with them before they start nesting.
``We're going to discourage them,'' Cline said. ``But it's extremely difficult.''
His office, he said, has seen it happen over and over.
``As development occurs and areas are being destroyed, they lose their habitat and seek other homes,'' he said.
As beautiful as the birds are, Cline said, the great egrets are ``messier that most other colony nesting show birds.''
``They drop a lot of material on the ground,'' he said.
One look at several homes on Lynn Drive and you know he's right.
A lot of people stop to take pictures of the big birds, Kathleen Culpepper said, and she has to admit that she, too, might do the same.
``The birds are all right as long as they're not in my yard,'' she said. ``But we've been taken over by them this year.''
A neighbor, Edna Beacham, has mixed feelings.
``They are beautiful and I thoroughly enjoy watching them,'' Beacham said. ``They fight and play out in the yard and one little one has even decided he's a duck.''
Beacham said the young great egret ``goes around with the ducks and even eats with them.''
She admits that the ``smell is a problem.''
``So many die when they fall out of the trees,'' she said.
Beacham has been watching one young bird who broke his wing but survived.
``He stays on the ground and his mother feeds him,'' she said. ``But he seems healthy.''
What happens when the other fly away and he can't?
``Well, I guess we'll look after him,'' Beacham replied. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by JIM WALKER
Some great egrets take up residence on Lynn Drive, by the Elizabeth
River.[colorcover photo]
A great egret struts across one of the lawns on Lynn Drive. Although
the residents like to watch the birds, which took up residence in
the neighborhood last spring, they are upset with their unclean
habits.
Droppings from the great egret colony ruin the paint on wooden
shutters and make shrubs unsightly as well.
One of the egrets, which fell out of a tree, lies dead on a lawn, at
left. Such accidents are not uncommon and create an odor problem in
the Lynn Drive neighborhood.
by CNB