Egret rescue efforts underway after Sunday’s storms blew chicks from trees in Portsmouth
About 40 egrets were blown from pine trees when a powerful wind gust traveling 80 miles per hour swept through Portsmouth on Sunday night.
Melissa Manasse has lived in a neighborhood on the Elizabeth River for five years and has become familiar with the egret colony that calls a stand of loblolly pines home.
“I enjoy them,” Manasse said of the graceful white birds with the long, S-shaped necks. “I like the sound they make.”
After the wind gust, Manasse went out with her husband and some neighbors to see if they could help the birds who were blown from the trees. Many were chicks and died in the storm.
But some survived the gale. Manasse ended up with three rescued birds in a box in her garage Sunday night.
Portsmouth Animal Control, an Elizabeth River Project representative and a wildlife rehabilitator all converged on the neighborhood Monday to help with egret rescue efforts.
“Yesterday was hard,” Manasse said Monday. “There were some tears shed from my side. But today, it was so nice to hear that like 18 of them, including a bunch of babies, were rescued.”
Sixteen birds were rescued and taken to a local wildlife rehabilitation center.
Casey Shaw, communications director for the Elizabeth River Project, a nonprofit that works to improve the health of the river, was on scene Monday. Shaw, a certified landscape professional, wears many hats at the organization and jumped in with rescue efforts.
“There was a bird that was right on the shoreline, and they were trying to flush it out, and it was going toward the water,” Shaw said. “I was like, ‘I’ve got waders.’”
Shaw put on the waterproof garment she keeps in her car — insulated, winter waders that she hadn’t anticipated wearing on the 85-degree day — and fished the bird out of the marsh.
A tree service cleaning up debris from the storm found another pair of baby birds in an intact nest that had fallen. The two chicks were also rescued.
Spring is a difficult time for egrets, according to Bryan Watts, a William & Mary conservation biologist who studies egrets and herons in the Tidewater area.
“It comes down to a timing issue,” Watts said. “If the chicks are up in the nest and they’re of a certain age, they are fairly vulnerable to high winds.”
Chicks born in the spring who can’t yet fly might be vulnerable to the many storms in late May and June that buffet the loblolly pines where egret colonies nest.
“You have a lot of nests up in the crowns of these pines, and you can imagine what it’s like up there when it gets windy,” Watts said. “Those branches are swaying and it’s like a rollercoaster ride.”
There are four egret colonies in Hampton Roads — in Hampton, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach. Watts surveyed the colony in Portsmouth in late May and counted 392 nests. Each nest corresponds to a pair of adult birds, so Watts estimated a little less than 800 adults in the colony. Egrets lay three to five eggs a year, and Watts said maybe two chicks per nest survive to adulthood.
There used to be around eight egret colonies in Hampton Roads, according to Watts. The birds rely on groups of pine trees together in which to nest, but homeowners don’t tend to be fans of the birds’ droppings or discarded fish and often remove the pines. The population of egrets locally has declined as their habitats decreased in size.
Statewide, though, egret populations rebounded after hunting of the birds was outlawed in the early 20th century and the pesticide DDT was banned in 1972.
“The great egrets are doing well” in Virginia, Watts said.
Cianna Morales, 757-957-1304, cianna.morales@virginiamedia.com
