Bird of the Yesterday: egrets. This is a great egret, the sassiest of the wading birds. 9/6/2024.
Where: all over Delmarva
When: summer and fall of 2024, mostly
Things I'm Thinking About:
I pre-loaded three days of content, certain that I’d be able to spend an hour in that time writing something well-crafted and nostalgic about birds, which I love, and love to talk about! But here we all are. It's 8pm, I just got to my room, and I would like to be asleep by 8:30, tops.
This event I am working is attended almost exclusively by special operations enlisted field medics, and I have never seen such a collection of mind-boggling broad shoulders on men in one room in my life. So there's that, at least.
I want to walk somewhere outside that is safe and green, by myself, so badly I could cry.
I can't believe it's only Wednesday.
I’m just gonna dump a bunch of photos with captions.
Egrets: I’ve had a few.
8/13/2024. This is a great egret. I think these are, in addition to being out sassiest of the tall wading birds, are one of the more beautiful and graceful looking ones. They are much more social than Great Blue Herons, and they have what I cannot help but think of as a ruffled hem.
10/16/2024. This is a snowy egret. He is a smaller, more compact little guy, with bright yellow feet. He is an excellent fisherman and seems to love running water.
7/26/2024. On this day, this great egret ate two frogs in a row right in front of me. On Saturday that American bittern ate two frogs in a row right in front of me. I can only conclude that for a marsh bird, the serving size for frogs is two. 7/26/2024. Great egrets have dark feet and yellow beaks, snowy egrets are the reverse, and identification can be a little confusing based on their age. One of these birds might actually be a juvenile GBH, the beak, eye, and foot colors all overlap. The main point here is look how pretty, all that pure lovely white on green. 4/8/2025. This was at Bombay Hook, and I stumbled across them on a mostly dry pond just as the sun was meeting the horizon. This was a nice evening. I remember being very struck by this scene, and feeling very special to have caught them. I'm glad I saw this photo tonight.
