Heronry or Rookery

The officials keep calling what we had a heronry instead of a rookery. Has anyone bothered to look at the definition?

Heronry - the breeding place of a colony of herons

Rookery - a breeding ground for gregarious birds

They need to call it what it is a Rookery!

It is amazing...

It is amazing how many people do not know about the problems the birds create. The "bird lovers" use fear as a weapon. Neighborhoods that are suffering are kept quite due to this weapon. I can not find any stories on Balch Springs. Their neighborhood was infested like ours and their City wasn't even picking up the dead!

The birds are moving into more and more residential areas due to the lack of predators. It has already been proven that a close water source really is not a factor. The birds in Balch Springs were two miles away from the nearest water source. The birds in Carrollton flew in every night from Lake Lewisville not the pond at the end of the street.

The streets don't look clean...

After the rains the streets look worse. It's like the rain soaked the poo out of the street. There are white spots where all the birds were again...the smell is back too.

Add a couple of more City's to the list

I found out Balch Springs had a problem this year. The City was not even picking up the fallen ones at all. Mexia has also had problems with rookeries....

The City listened...

They are working on having a contingency plan in place for next year and many more...

A Migratory Bird Workshop will be held for the entire city, they are training their employees to look out for the citizens, they are going to look for neighborhoods that could be at risk and warn them...

I am very happy that they have listened and are taking action.

Next get the law changed and the Cattle Egret removed from being protected.

The Nest...

We are still waiting on the "all clear" to remove the nest from the trees. The residents of the neighborhood have been getting bids for the removal.

I wonder what is up there still in the trees that we do not know about? We will find out soon...

The Nest Count is...

We went through the neighborhood and counted the nest that are still in the trees. Several have already blown out due to storms and high winds. We did not include these in our numbers.

Chamberlain = 931

Addington = 270

Total = 1201

So the numbers go:
2 Adult Birds will lay 4 Eggs which will hatch 2 Chicks = 4 Birds / 2 Eggs

2 Breeding Cycles adds 4 more Eggs which will add 2  more Chicks  = 2 Birds / 2 Eggs

plus the Late Comers
2 Adult Birds will lay 4 Eggs which will hatch 2 Chicks = 4 Birds / 2 Eggs

So the total per nest would be 4 Adults / 6 Chicks / 6 Eggs

This means on two streets we had:
4804 Adult Birds
7206 Chicks
7206 Eggs on the ground

The City picked up a little over 700 birds which is about 10% of the birds which comes to 720.

The numbers are the numbers

New stories on the clean up

Carol Cavazos did a story on the clean up -

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2011/08/30/carrollton-neighborhood-close-to-cleaning-up-mess-from-egrets/

Sara Story did a story on the clean up -

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Carrollton-Cleans-Up-Bird-Mess--128829698.html

Diane Solis did a story on the clean up -

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/carrollton-farmers-branch/headlines/20110831-carrollton-begins-egret-cleanup.ece