A Challenging Winter for the Herons and Egrets

2010 was an interesting winter because of its cold. I have kept this article because of the old picture of the little pond near our home. When compared to this linked picture taken in 2014, it is clear just now much the little pond’s open waters have shrunk due to some misguided efforts.

Building a berm on the upper side has diverted a lot of water. Enlarging the drain on the lower side has accelerated the shrinking of the pond.

Of course all of this messing with mother nature has come at a cost. It has disrupted the normal drainage of the backyard that drains into the pond. While I am only an interested observer and no expert, my educated guess is that this has caused the rest of this nearby yard to become a lot wetter. Below is the original post.

2010 was colder than normal on the Crystal Coast of North Carolina where we have lived since the fall of 2006. There was ice on much of the quiet water around the White Oak River’s edges for several days.

Many of the herons who are accustomed to feeding in the shallows were locked out of their normal feeding spots. Fortunately the weather was not so cold as to freeze all the water, but it did freeze enough of it to cause some heron squabbles.

The small spring fed pond adjacent to our lot stayed ice free so for a few days it was a heavily contested spot with both great blue herons and great white egrets jockeying for position.

With the ice gone, things returned pretty much to normal. Even have some of our wintering pelicans came back in the gut.

You can put out bird seed for many song birds when the snows come in the mountains, but what do you do with the waters ice over on the coast? Maybe buying some mullet and throwing them on the ice would work.