glowworm6: Couple of weeks ago, I was asked to giving a tour of Ridgefield WLR to a bunch of Girl Sc

glowworm6:

Couple of weeks ago, I was asked to giving a tour of Ridgefield WLR to a bunch of Girl Scout Brownies, unfortunately I said yes (my Businesses partner’s wife is the Scout leader). Well there were 15 little girls, 3 vans and 5 adults.  One parent in each van and a fellow birder. There was this one precocious little girl about 5 years old, she wasn’t old enough for the troop but one of the parents brought her along.  As I was going thru the WLR (its a drive thru WLR), I showed them an albino Nutria that lives in the park (this becomes important later).  I pointed out the Great Blue Heron, talked about its habits, like any tour, about a third was interested, and two thirds was bored.  Well this girl just kept asking questions about the bird and I kept asking, next we saw an egret, and again I went thru my spiel was saying that they were in the same family as the Heron, and suddenly the little girl put 2+2 together and of course came up with a great answer, it was an Albino Heron. Well next we saw a couple of Sandhill cranes, I mentioned that they are migrants and were different from the Heron and Egret in that they were more a vegetarian bird. Again the little girl added 2+2 and said that they were like Aunt Judy, they were immigrants and they were vegetarian, to which her mother corrected her and said Judy was Vegan in that she didn’t eat meat or meat byproducts.  So to simplify life I propose new names for the following birds.

Great Blue Heron = Great Blue Heron

Egret=Albino Heron

Sandhill Cranes=Vegan Heron.