Herons and Pelicans
September 9th, 2008 | Written by Lucy Brzoska |The breeding season over for another year, by the end of August most herons have dispersed – though some will roost in the zoo during the winter. I found the plane trees deserted, with nursery activity reduced to the pines overlooking the pelicans, where young Cattle and Little egrets were still being fed. A handful of recently fledged herons also remained.
One grew tired of throat-wobbling and yakking, and crash-landed through the branches into the flamingo enclosure. The lion pen, fortunately, is quite far away. Dark and dishevelled, as if it had come through a chimney, it explored the area, not entirely sure where it was going. A more mature juvenile, sleek in morning suit-grey, exhibited the next stage of plumage in young herons.
The keeper arrived with a container of live goldfish, which he freed into the pelicans’ moat. It’s one way of stirring the hefty birds into action. They enthusiastically set about catching their lunch, casting their expandable bills sideways under water, like fishing nets. And there was plenty left for egrets and herons to practice their fishing skills too, deploying quite different strategies: the egrets would run after their prey, poised to change direction in an instant, while the herons relied on their long sinuous necks to snatch the fleeing fish. Owners of ornamental garden ponds would have had to look away.
As they live directly underneath the heronry, and share a fish diet, the pelicans are the captives most affected by its spectacular expansion. But although their placid existence has been disrupted, this year a pelican chick was successfully hatched, a rare occurrence in the zoo.
The one-footed Malibu stork that used to share the enclosure was immediately transferred elsewhere. A tough, powerfully-billed old warrior, it would brazen it out with the herons at their most competitive, while the pelicans, overwhelmed, huddled in a corner.
The baby pelican has grown into a vast fleecy lump that spends its life on a pedestal, being fed by doting parents. It appeared quite capable of looking after itself, lunging at one of the herons when it came too near. The startled heron waited till the chick had dozed off before approaching again, seeking out any forgotten fish.
Pelicans, herons and egrets, all were in moult, with feathers sticking out at odd angles, waiting to fall. The pelicans were like shabby old eiderdowns, shedding clouds of feathers. The plane tree leaves were also drifting down, and soon the empty nests will be visible again.
