Great Egret

With the return to warm weather, one of our larger herons, the Great Egret, can now be found around here. Though nowhere near as common as their Great Blue Heron cousins, their size and almost completely white coloring makes them striking birds as they wade through shallow water.

The yellow bill, lack of a plume, and black legs/feet differentiate it pretty well from most other heron/egret candidates, and it looks too lithe to be a Cattle Egret without breeding plumage. Another reason it's not a Cattle Egret is that it shouldn't have its non-breeding plumage right now. And finally, of the white herons in my area, by far the one I've seen this most is the Great Egret.

I've mentioned before that though there seems to be a correlation between non-white herons having "heron" in their name and white herons having "egret" in their name, there's no real taxonomic distinction between the 2. In fact, the Great Egret is more closely related to the Great Blue Heron than it is to any of the egrets in this part of the country.

May 19, 2022 at Duke Farms
Photo 203067017, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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