They keep coming

On Monday I mentioned that I there were more Snowy Egrets on our campus than I'd ever seen before. Well, even more turned up yesterday: There were twelve together when I drove onto the campus. What's more, our usually solitary Great Egret had now been joined by two others. And a Great Blue Heron had turned up, too.



My initial thought was that there must be more fish than usual in the lake and that this has attracted the egrets. But then I started thinking that perhaps it's all connected with the start of the mating season. (At home, Chickadees were checking out our birdhouses yesterday and three Northern Mockingbirds were chasing each other around the yards.)

Or perhaps both explanations are partially correct: the egrets are gathering looking for mates but the Great Blue Heron took the gathering as an indication that the egrets had found a good food supply.

I suppose one of the great things about birding is trying to figure out why birds do what they do!