No (r)egrets.

We have a lot of strange wildlife around here. If you look up Lake Chapala in Wikipedia, you're told this is a critical habitat for migratory birds, such as White Pelicans. I've never seen a pelican here -- but maybe this is just a quick stop on a long migration and I've missed it.

What we have are egrets.

Egrets are lovely. They look quite elegant standing alone, ankle deep in water -- or in graceful flight.

They're a bit like the silent movie stars who had voices like nails scratching a blackboard. Once you hear them, they never really look the same.

Ross asked Chuy what they were, and he said the locals call them "dog birds." And I don't think he meant "dog" in a good way. They're big. They end up sitting together in one large tree in a neighborhood and talking. All. The. Time.

The photo here is too small to see them clearly -- but that's definitely their neighborhood tree, as seen from our terrace. I'm sure it's quite a mess below it. (If you're really, really interested, you can click on the photo to enlarge it.)

We call them the Jub-Jub Birds. The basic philosophy of the Jub-Jub is: "Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub. Jub."

It's a tonal language. As long as the tone sounds off-key and irritating, you're doing it right.

Conversations are long and wearisome. They tend to have cocktail parties long into the night. (You may recall an early post of mine describing a bird that was telling the same knock-knock joke all night. That was written before I had learned the subtleties of the Jub-Jub language. She'd actually been telling the same joke for weeks.)

Every fifteen minutes or so, someone at the party starts moving the conversation on a little too quickly. Many of his fellows become indignant. Some of them haven't quite gotten the earlier point and would have liked a little more explanation. Things become tense. Then the screaming starts. At first, silly me, I thought it was a whole different kind of a fight. I thought it was cats. But it's too loud and violent -- and lasts too long -- for a mere cat fight. When they're only slightly offended, it sounds like a cat with a terrible hairball.

Which makes you wonder why they're called dog birds.