THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605260048
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: 101 lines
One or two at a time, great white egrets are beautiful to see.
But when they take up residence by the hundreds, they are dreadful neighbors.
Just ask the folks who live in cozy upscale neighborhoods on the Western Branch in the middle of the city.
A colony of great egrets, believed to be escaping development on Sparrow Road in Chesapeake in the 1980s, has returned this year to Portsmouth. After devastating several homes and lawns in Lynn Shores last summer, the handsome birds - as many as 200 pairs - have moved across an inlet to Glensheallah, another section of old trees and comfortable homes.
Full-grown great egrets stand 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall and are the largest of the species except for the great blue heron.
``They're all around here now,'' Anne Carr, a Glensheallah resident, said on a recent day. ``There were four or five standing in my back yard early this morning, and they fly in and out picking up twigs for their nests.''
Hundreds of the birds are nesting at the nearby Woman's Club of Portsmouth, built as a country club many years ago. The clubhouse, shaded by tall, ancient pines along the banks of an inlet, and other houses standing under tall pines, have attracted the egrets.
They fly in and out during the day, catching eels and other fish in nearby waterways and coming home to roost in the evening.
The numbers increase daily and will continue to grow as fledglings hatch and are able to get out on their own.
One house has a slate roof turned almost chalk white by bird droppings. In Lynn Shores last summer, acidic droppings killed grass and shrubbery. Shutters had to be repainted. And many people say they find unbearable the odor from dead fledglings that fall from the high nests.
When the fledgling fatalities reached a critical stage in Lynn Shores last July, the city Health Department enlisted the city's Animal Control Agency to haul off the carcasses. This has not happened yet in Glensheallah, where some birds still are building their shallow nests high in the trees.
Areas with century-old loblolly pines are the most likely nesting places for the stately but messy birds, said Bryan Watts, an avian sociologist at the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary.
``Great egrets require trees over 100 years old,'' he said, ``so there are limited locations for them.''
In 1993, Watts and his colleagues surveyed Eastern Virginia and found 45 colonies containing about 2,500 pairs of great egrets - a number that increased by about 50 percent over a 20-year period, he said. The center has studied 24 species of birds and documented a three-fold increase overall.
``It's clearly related to the banning of DDT and other pesticides,'' he said.
The great egrets are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which limits the ways people can try to move them out.
``You can't kill them, take their nests or their eggs,'' Watts said.
People may use pyrotechnic guns to frighten them away. It is not unusual to hear the screamer guns going off around Lynn Shores and Glensheallah. Some people also use water hoses to try to scare them.
``But it's a no-win thing,'' Watts said. ``There really is not solution. You just run them from one place to the next.''
A colony that nested in Virginia Beach's Thoroughgood section for 50 years would not budge until residents cut down their old and tall pine trees - the same thing that causes egret colonies to flee developing areas.
Another colony that nested on Eleanor Court near Old Dominion University in Norfolk also has been gone for a couple of years, Watts said.
``We don't know what has happened to them, but we think they have spread around with other colonies, some of them in Portsmouth.''
The great egrets once nested only in areas closer to salt water, Watts said.
``But they've moved inland, and we've found some up toward Richmond and some all the way up to Washington.''
State biologists have attempted to set aside land with appropriate trees away from people to give the great egrets a place of their own. Seven or eight years ago, Watts' group tried putting artificial nests in a remote area of the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base between Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Others have taped egret calls for lures and placed decoys in trees with the hope of attracting the birds to isolated pine trees and wetlands.
``You can't force them or entice them,'' Watts said. ``The birds ignored them all.''
Great egrets tolerate human beings very well, he said, so they can live in neighborhoods such as Lynn Shores and Glensheallah.
Carr's experiences with the egrets around her yard confirm this.
``When they first came, I could clap my hands or slam a door and they would fly away. Now they don't pay any attention to me.
``They're beautiful to look at, but I don't want to live with them.''
Chances are, however, she and her neighbors will have to bear the noise and the stench this year until the adult birds begin to take off for the Gulf States and then to the Caribbean in August. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot
In Glensheallah, resident Anne Carr says egrets ``fly in and out
picking up twigs for their nests.''
Photo
MARK MITCHELL/The Virginian-Pilot
Egrets have flocked to old pines in the Glensheallah area of
Portsmouth. Said Bryan Watts, avian sociologist at the College of
William and Mary: ``Great egrets require trees over 100 years old,
so there are limited locations for them.'' by CNB