Exciting Egret | Epistolary By Atreyo,9, Kolkata+ Cool facts
If you were a bird in a zoo, how would you feel? 9 year old Atreyo from Kolkata shares his perspective, in this epistolary about egrets
Dear Grandpa,
I am very sad as I have been locked up in this cage. I am in an enclosure named The Egrets. But people still admire me for my beautiful snow white plumage.
We have cages that restrain a bird from flying away. I was brought to this zoo by a man named Kalan. He first dug a big hole and then covered it with leaves. Without seeing properly, I stepped on that and fell into it. I miss my freedom and how I used to roam around and jump from one tree to the other.
But the advantages of this zoo are that I regularly get good food to eat and big bowls of water everyday. My life in this zoo is comfortable because the people give me food and water at the right time and take care of me properly.
But I feel lonely here because I can’t talk to my friends. Slowly, I am forgetting how to fly as this is a small cage, nor do they allow us to fly. My flight feathers are becoming of no use. I miss my freedom and abhor this life of a prisoner.
Hope I could fly back to you whenever I wish as I used to do….
Miss you Grandpa
Yours lovingly,
Jack
2. The great egret faced near extinction and is a conservation success story
Nearly wiped out in the United States in the late 1800s, when its plumes were sought for use in fashion, the Great Egret made a comeback after early conservationists put a stop to the slaughter and protected its colonies; as a result, this bird became the symbol of the National Audubon Society. The great egret is the symbol of the National Audubon Society and represents a conservation success story. The birds have enjoyed legal protection over the last century, and their numbers have increased substantially.
Read more at Audubon here
Great egrets are found near water, salt or fresh, and feed in wetlands, streams, ponds, tidal flats, and other areas.
