THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 26, 1996 TAG: 9606260627
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 54 lines
In awarding these seven sisters by the sea only a middlin' rank among America's most livable cities, the editors of Money Magazine may miss some of our amenities.
One bonus in being in Hampton Roads is the extraordinary mingling of wildlife and people in downtowns and suburbia as well as in forests and swamps.
Just the other day, photographer Jim Walker spotted a yellow crowned night heron perched on the edge of The Hague waterway across from the Chrysler Museum and within earshot of the traffic along Norfolk's Brambleton Avenue.
That heron, which is about as tall as an umbrella, is a spectacular fellow with a rakish crest that reminds me of the slicked back pompadour haircuts that the young men sported in my childhood.
It is usually found in swamps, marshes or woods, yet there he was, bold as day, looking across the water at people going in and out of the museum.
Jim excels in photographing nature, and my suspicion is that when word gets around among the birds that he is roving with his camera, they rush to pose for him.
Most herons are nocturnal diners, but these past few weeks the young herons have appeared in the green field across the way at dusk and early in the morning as if they think they are standing in a lake.
A neighbor, Nelson Voke, has spotted them probing in the ground. That may account for holes, about three inches deep, that pockmark the field as, perhaps, they search for grubs. Capturing a fish in water, they toss it up and gulp it in mid-air.
Wild beings find their way unhindered into the Virginia Zoo off Granby Street in Norfolk. Three pairs of Canada geese built nests on the grounds, one by the doorway of the headquarters of the Virginia Zoological Society.
The female sitting on the eggs was quite serene under the gaze of passers-by. But the male, posted at rest on the grass 10 feet away, was alert for intruders.
A stately peacock came parading around a corner 50 feet off, spreading his gorgeous tail feathers, whereupon the male goose arose and began honking a warning and moving his head on his long neck backward and and forward, threatening the peacock, telling him to back off.
When the peacock crossed some imaginary line, the male goose took off in flight three feet above the ground and attacked the peacock, hitting at him with the sharp toes on his webbed feet and buffeting him with the hard upper edges of his great wings. The peacock fled.
When the goslings hatch, the mother leads them to the duck pond, where they launch and feed on algae, wild within the confines of the zoo. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by JIM WALKER, The Virginian-Pilot
A yellow crowned night heron perches on the edge of The Hague across
from the Chrysler Museum. by CNB