Normally about this time I would be cursing Father Time for secretly removing days out of the month leaving me scrambling to get posts out to hit our quota. A little different this month as I am quite ecstatic to turn the page on this rather painful month. Although, yesterday morning I was wearing a grin from ear to ear. Linda and I kept a long tradition going for what is now the 19th consecutive year. Will cover this more thoroughly on the Mothership in the coming weeks. In short, the Quad Cities Bix 7 was held in downtown Davenport, IA (link here). This beast of a hill course was the first race I ever entered and thus holds a special place in my heart. Linda walked the Quick Bix (2 miles) and I was ordered by …hmmm, how did Wally (link here) put it… oh yeah SWMBO (She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed) to at MOST walk the 7 miles now being a mere 4 weeks out from surgery (truth be told, she was rather insistent I walk the 2 mile with her and glad she finally relented to accept the 7). With elbow brace in place, lined up with the other 10,000+ runners, cheered as the starter gun rang out and headed out to battle the hill demons. Crossed the finish line around 1:07. Now before Linda (and anyone else) does the math on that and figures out my “little secret” I am going to once again turn you over to Brad to close this month out properly. While scanning through his queue I noticed this title and it was an absolute prefect fit. Take care everyone, see you in August (assuming nobody snitches on me and gets me in trouble ha).
Take it away Brad…
It has been a few months since we visited South Carolina during a cold Illinois winter. I’m still sorting through photos and remembering stories about the birds we saw. We aren’t snowbirds like generations before us. We just needed to do something outside, during February, without having to wear a parka. Plus, South Carolina was a brand-new state for us to visit.
While passing dozens of signs for the next mini-golf experience (Myrtle Beach is mini-golf capital of the U.S.), we headed south from Myrtle Beach to find Huntington Beach State Park.
After paying our very reasonable entrance fee, we drove across the causeway and parked the car. I assembled the cameras and mounted the big glass on my monopod. We headed to the observation deck next to the causeway. Today’s subject was flying above the tidal marsh, but ended up banking in our direction near the brackish water pond.
Hit the jump to learn more about today’s featured guest!
This great egret (Ardea alba) gracefully landed in the shallows. Once it carefully folded its nearly 65-inch wingspan, the egret began looking for breakfast. Great egrets, like most wading birds, spend the majority of their waking hours searching for food.
This photo reminds me of seeing video of the Concorde landing. We can only guess it already had permission to land from the control tower; its wings are outstretched, landing gear is down, and the “fuselage” is bent forward. Large wading birds look very graceful while flying or moving around in shallow water. Anything in between is rather awkward. Once they are stable in the shallows, great egrets go straight for the food.
Great egrets have a rather aggressive hunting style. They will walk slowly through the shallows looking for fish. Once an egret spots a potential meal, they become very still. Maybe this is to lull the fish into a false sense of security. Or maybe it’s to spring load their faces for the attack.
To the untrained observer, it looks like their very sharp bill breaks the surface of the water to lessen the impact on the rest of their face. One can certainly hope.
This particular egret was successful catching a small snack. Can you spot the small unlucky fish near the end of its bill? I believe great egrets have a much higher success rate catching fish than photographers do taking a photo of them catching fish. Though we (OK, it was Jan) did get a few photos of great egrets with rewards for their effort. We normally saw them slowly wading through the shallow water, admiring themselves in their reflection. Do these feathers make me look fat?
In actuality, they never really stop hunting for food. A great egret is a piscivore, eating mostly fish. They will occasionally eat crustaceans, amphibians, small reptiles, or small mammals if they are available. Great egrets will chase away competitors, or photographers, that annoy them.
A tricolored heron from a prior story (link here) decided to see what the great egret was up to. Moments before, they had both been motionless, making a rather nice photo. The tricolored decided to push things just a little too far, causing the great egret to react swiftly. Egrets and herons don’t normally move very quickly. In this case, both birds moved several feet in the blink of a shutter.
To make the nomenclature from the Department of Obvious Names (DON) even more confusing, great egrets are known by many names. A few of their Olde World aliases include: common egret, large egret, great white egret, or great white heron.
Great egrets have very long airy-looking feathers (called aigrettes, a French word thought to be the source of the egret’s name) used during mating displays. Unfortunately, these feathers were prized for decorations in the late 19th and early 20th century. Hundreds of thousands of egrets of all kinds were killed in large-scale slaughters for an ounce of feathers from each bird. Fortunately for the birds, the Audubon Society helped convince lawmakers to pass laws making the feather trade illegal. Thankfully, the great egret has made a recovery, but not quite to their former numbers.
I still think they count their feathers every now and then to see if any are missing. Two thousand and six, two thousand and seven . . .
At 2-3 years of age, great egrets will begin mating. Males choose the nesting locations and build the nests, usually 100 feet up in a sturdy tree very near water. The pair are monogamous for the breeding season, and will incubate 1-6 eggs for 3-4 weeks. The chicks hatch over the course of a few days. This usually means the earliest chick hatched has the best chance of survival. Since the chicks compete fiercely with each other, weaker siblings do not survive. Chicks can leave the nest at 4 weeks and fly at about 6-7 weeks. Once the kids are out of the house, a nesting pair may raise another brood during the same breeding season.
Not really caring if we were watching or not, this one saw a fish, and took advantage of the opportunity to make a graceful exit. And to catch another snack.
Thank you for reading. If you want to see more bird photos from our South Carolina winter escape, please visit here.
Credits
Thanks again to Jan and Allyson for proofreading and editing. Thanks to Jan for most of the photos in this article.
Life Intrigued 