What Makes Great Egrets Great
These beautiful, white birds stand in stark contrast to their environments.
Sometimes nature just pops. Just absolutely stands out and takes your breath away. Think of puffy clouds whose white color and cotton candy features absolutely pop against a dark blue sky. Well, while visiting family in Texas and going bird watching with my father, I happened to see just such a sight in the form of a Great Egret.
We were walking around in Espada Park, which is along the San Antonio River and is named for Mission Espada, the first mission in Texas. (A Mission is a Spanish colonial-era settlement with a fort and Catholic Church).
There were a few Great Egrets in the area and I was eager to find one. I lucked out when the bird above flew just barely in the camera frame as I rushed to photograph it.
That first picture was exciting for two reasons. Most importantly, look at the contrast. The Great Egret flying gracefully against the dark green backdrop is sublime. If that scene could be expressed in song, it would be a bop (as I am informed today’s youth say). I.e., a hit. It would jive, you dig?
But seriously, witnessing moments make you pause for a good minute. Nature is art. Like a really good painting, book, or piece of music—it makes you take a step back and contemplate beauty, life, and the divine.
The second—and much less important—reason I was pleased with the first photo, is that it reminded me of the cover for the classic 1993 Super Nintendo video game Secret of Mana. That game was one I always wanted to play but never owned until recently when they released it for the Nintendo Switch. It has impressive worldbuilding coupled with an excellent soundtrack.
But I digress…
The Great Egret, much like the Red-Winged Blackbird, loves wetlands and marshes. However, identifying these birds can be troublesome. Confusingly enough, Egrets are apparently also Herons, but a Great Egret is not the same as a Great White Heron.
The Great Egret has a large wingspan that can reach up to approximately 4.75 feet. Such a length allows these birds to cruise majestically without needing to constantly flap their wings (in contrast to say, Atlantic Puffins, which must beat their wings exceedingly fast).
Unfortunately, the Great Egret has some things that can detract for its majestic nature. When conditions are difficult and resources are scares, its younglings brutally murder each other in their nest. The first few born may attack the youngest or tip it out of the nest, knowing that one less beak to feed means higher odds of survival for them.
I’ll likely circle back to this in a future post, but there’s a lot of weird (or ruthless) things about birds that you’ll quickly realize from a casual Google search. After all, dinosaurs such as velociraptors are the ancestors of birds and likely had feathers. So yeah, that cute little thing eating seeds on your patio would be a major threat if it was bigger.
The Great Egret can be found year-round along the U.S. South-East Coast from southern New Jersey, down to Florida, and along the Gulf of Mexico to Texas.
Until next (Bird!) time,
Grover