Photos: Egret at Lake Lagunita II

Photos: Egret at Lake Lagunita II

Photographs at Lake Lagunita
Stanford University, May 6, 2011

By Peter Y. Chou
WisdomPortal.com

Preface: On Friday, May 6, 2011, a friend picked me up at Los Altos Library at 6:10 pm to drop me off at 957 Colorado Avenue at the Friends House in Palo Alto for Waverley Writers Poetry Reading. She wanted to go to Stanford's Lake Lagunita to see if the egret that we saw on April 29 was still there. Since the temperature hit almost 90^o last week, I surmised the water had evaporated in the lake. When we got there, the lake's water did dwindle a bit, but ducks were still swimming. However there was no sign of the egret. It was cute seeing a mother duck with her baby ducklings at the edge of the lake. Seven Canadian geese rested nearby. I descended closer to the lake to take photos of these large birds that were not here before. Suddenly a streak of white wings flew across the lake. My friend shouted "The Egret has returned!" Perhaps the Egret was jealous that I was paying too much attention to the Canadian Geese and wanted to show that he was the "King of Lake Lagunita". Since I was already near the lake's edge, today's photos of the Egret are larger than those taken previously. May these additional photos of the Lake Lagunita Egret convey the joy felt on his return. We left the lake at 7:19 pm and I was ten minutes late for Waverley Writers Poetry Reading which featured Keith Ekiss, former Stegner Fellow in Poetry, who read from his Pima Road Notebook. Thirty three poets read during Open Reading. I was the next to the last reader and shared my poems "Enlightenment to Enlightenment" and "The Kiss of Bliss" written for Stephen Dobyns Stanford Poetry Workshops (Winter 2011).