ML345992231

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

After receiving notification from Kyle Jones of his sighting this morning of three Snowy Egrets in the White River above the Fox Stand bridge I headed up to check them out. Upon arrival at 10:45 a.m. a lone egret (the other two having flown off before I got there) was spotted about 200 yards upstream standing on the right edge of the river. A spotting scope was used to get a good look at it. I then moved to a better vantage point on the opposite side of the river. From there I was looking downstream at the bird which had moved to a grassy gravel bar affording closer range views (binoculars) and photos. Unfortunately viewing time was cut short when two people waded into the river spooking the bird and causing it to take to the air flying upriver and out of sight. Based on the photo of the two egrets accompanying Kyle’s original eBird post, I accepted both as Snowy Egrets without any consideration of Little Egret or even a white morph Little Blue Heron, even though there were features that did not completely resonate with me that the bird was a typical Snowy Egret, i.e. the two elongated head plumes, dark (not yellow-orange) facial skin and pale yellow (not orange) feet. However, Jacob Crawford having seen my posted photo offered the possibility of it being a Little Egret. Subsequently, I studied my photo in more detail and arrived at the same conclusion. Kudos to Jacob for picking up on morphological features that I was too quick to dismiss and thanks to Zac Cota-Weaver for bringing this to the attention of the Vermont birding community. Another identification feature given in the 2017 edition of the NGS field guide is white feathers on the chin extend further out on the underside of the lower mandible in the Little Egret. This is quite evident in the cropped photo (below) of the bird’s head.

Technical information

Model

Canon PowerShot SX50 HS

ISO

200

Focal length

215 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/8.0

Shutter speed

1/320 sec

Dimensions

4000 pixels x 2664 pixels

Original file size

4.13 MB