Egrets ruffling feathers with noise, mess
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It’s a far cry from the the movie ‘The Birds,’ but the town of Willows, Calif., is confronting a feathered menace. Willows, 90 miles north Sacramento, is being invaded by egrets during their breeding and nesting season, and many residents have had enough of the stench, noise and mess. As The Times’ Steve Chawkins writes:
Memorial Park, a square-block stretch of green near the center of town, is encircled with yellow police tape and is off limits to normal use. More than 1,000 birds, mainly snowy egrets and some black-crested night herons, are nesting there, turning patches of lawn a lunar gray and showering the grass with broken shells and feathers. Officials say the guano is slowly killing 60-foot-tall redwoods and pines. In the park and on bordering streets, county crews have picked up more than 1,200 dead chicks that toppled from nests on high. Neighbors complain about stench and flies, and half-digested crayfish raining down on them as they try to dine outdoors. With the birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, some see the closed park as an example of well-intended government regulation gone awry. The law prevents Glenn County, which owns the land, from chasing the creatures out during breeding and nesting -- a period that started in April and won’t end until some time in September.