Snowy Egret feeding nestlings...

Birding Hilton Head Island, SC and Pinckney Island at the Ibis Pond Rookery

...continued from the Tricolored Heron takes a walk post.

Even though I try, I can't begin to describe the energy and wonder of the Ibis Pond rookery at the height of the nesting season. There are so many birds and so much action it's hard to decide where to point the camera. Noise is varied and nonstop, sometimes slipping into a state that can only be described as a cacophony, and when you mix in the pungent aroma of regurgitated fish guts spiking here and there as you walk around the mote...with the never ending beauty and variety of birds at every glance, it can actually start to feel like an assault on the senses (but it's a good assault that keeps you coming back for more)!

As the Tricolored Herons from an earlier post were learning to fly in the trees in front of me, to the left, in the trees growing along the mote (again, on our side!), several parents in a mini colony of Little Blue Herons and Snowy Egrets were busy feeding their young while others sat patiently on eggs. Here a Snowy Egret tends to nestlings.

...you can see how the baby's gular pouch has expanded to hold the food.

...and I think we have a glimpse of regurgitated fish guts here--sort of greenish grey. Yum. Just what the baby needs to get big and strong!

...the sun did a beautiful job highlighting the baby's gular pouch. Kind of cool...it was the first time I had ever seen the sun shine through the tiny pouch.

It looks like baby#2 has given up, but he's just resting. He was fed first!

These photos are from June 7, 2010. The rookery was not as far along as the same week last year, but there seemed to be more herons and egrets. It was strange that they had crossed over the mote and were nesting on our side. Not many people were visiting the rookery while I was there. It was hot...really hot...like 100 degrees F hot, so that might have kept people away, but those that did visit were respectful of the nesting birds and kept back. That was good to see. The rookery wasn't quite as pungent or noisy this year either, but I assume a week or so after I left, the noise increased, and as more and more babies hatched out, so too the wonderful smells!

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