It’s early August, and I’ve gone to one of my favorite places, Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, to do two of my favorite things: birdwatching and photography. Bombay Hook is one of the largest areas of tidal salt marsh in the mid-Atlantic region, and it’s a magnet for birds in all seasons.

At this time of year, I’d expect it to be filled with shorebirds, migrating south from their breeding grounds in the Arctic. This year, though, there has been a lot of rain, and the freshwater pools on the refuge are too deep for most of the shorebirds, and they have gone elsewhere in search of food.

I’m disappointed not to see them, but there’s a different treat in store. The marsh edges are studded with bushes bearing huge white and pink flowers of the Swamp Mallow, Hibiscus moscheutos. From a distance, the impression is of huge snowflakes decorating the tops of the marsh grasses.

I’ve seen Swamp Mallow here before, but not in such quantities, and I puzzle over the change from previous years. Perhaps it’s something to do with the Refuge’s efforts to control the invasive Common Reed, Phragmites australis, which has gradually been choking the marsh? Successful control of Phragmites requires the plant equivalent of the Apocalypse – fires, floods and pestilence – except for the replacement of pestilence by massive of doses of pesticide (specifically, an aquatic-safe herbicide). Ironic, isn’t it, that in order to protect and restore native plants like Swamp Mallow, we need to use poison?

In addition to the Swamp Mallow, the freshwater pools at Bombay Hook are also filled with large white wading birds. In the photo above we see a Great Egret, the size and shape of a heron but with blinding white feathers and a yellow beak. In the photo below we see a large group of egrets, the taller Great Egrets and smaller Snowy Egrets, with some dark Glossy Ibis mixed in.

The egrets are another conservation success story. In the breeding season they develop gorgeous, airy plumes, long feathers which serve no practical purpose except to attract a mate. Those feathers nearly led to the extinction of the species. In the late 1800’s it became the fashion for women to decorate their hats with the birds’ long plumes (and sometimes even the entire bird, in a taxidermized state).

In 1896, two socialites from Boston began to campaign against the fashion for wearing plumes and feathers, converting their friends to the cause at tea parties, and eventually organizing the forerunner of today’s National Audubon Society. In the next 20 years the ladies and the organization they founded succeeded in passing state and later federal legislation prohibiting the slaughter and trade of migratory birds. Egret populations slowly recovered, and today we can enjoy seeing their snowy feathers in our coastal wetlands.

What choices will we need to make today, so that future generations can see this snow in summer?