The Experience, Alameda: Frank Bette Center for the Arts New Exhibit

The Experience:

The Egret. Making Contact. You Can Too!

From Friday June 4 – Friday August 6, 2021, you can learn about the striking personalities of egrets at home around the San Francisco Bay. With his lens, Gerry Traucht captures egrets standing gracefully at city entrances, by freeways, lagoons, and parks. At surprise moments they perform their courting displays as mating rituals. He has taken special notice of Egrets in Alameda.

They are grace. They are otherworldly. In Alameda this colony of egrets intimately shares their way of life. Their courting, nesting, mating, and a cacophony of chicks. You can hear their clack clack clatter from Leydecker Park if you arrive at feeding times. It is a short stroll from car to their colony by the lagoon. You can observe all phases of their life and their mysteries often over six months from March through August.

“I love being at Harbor Bay Isle,” says photographer Gerry Traucht. “For years I have watched until their rangy Monterey pine finished its life span and was taken down. Would they come back? They surprised us. We thought they would claim a new tree, but they didn’t. They took all the trees in a grove of pines. They are fewer in number, but they offer a chance to watch them build over the next dozen years.”

Traucht’s photographs reveal movement that looks like dance, close-up images of individual birds looking into the camera, and wild feathers caught in a frenzied fraction of a second. The Frank Bette Center for the Arts is now open Friday – Sunday 11am – 5pm. Check their website for updates.