Great Egret Feeding Young, Smith Oaks Rookery, High Island, Texas

Visited Smith Oaks Rookery on High Island for the first time on Sunday. It was magical and breathtaking watching Roseate Spoonbills, Cormorants, Snowy Egrets and Great Egrets mating, nesting and caring for their young. These siblings were squabbling and the mother forced her beak down this one’s throat to feed him! Every now and then I would hear a chuckle or laugh from a photographer or someone else on the platform watching through binoculars. Like life there was comedy and also tragedy – heard a loud splash and squawking behind cattails where I assume a bird had wandered too closely to an alligator and been killed. Then my eyes drifted to a Roseate Spoonbill mother huddled with her babies, eyes closed, all of them napping, and a peaceful and heartwarming feeling washed over me, co-mingling with the sadness that one life had ended and now others were just beginning, and the hilariousness of the entire loud spectacle in front of me.