Great White Ghosts

[I never finished telling you about Florida, so here is a flashback.]

When I see a huge white wading bird, I think Great Egret, Ardea alba, but in southern Florida, I might well be wrong. True, there are plenty of these egrets around, but there are also decoys, designed to deceive. These impostors are in fact Great Blue Herons, Ardea herodias, but they’re a pure white subspecies Ardea herodias occidentalis, (and more helpfully sometimes called the Great White Heron, see more below.)

Great Egrets in breeding season have black legs,

bright green lores (the skin between beak and eyes),

and ethereally delicate plumes:

which they wield in flamboyant courtship displays:

stretching their necks to the sky:

to the bemusement of their pelican neighbors:

Great White Herons are much rarer. They have pale legs, a heavier yellow beak, and bluish lores:

with less delicate plumes:

Both of them are waders who stalk the shallows in search of prey. Which do you think this is, at sunrise in the Ten Thousand Islands?

It was, to my delight, a Great White Heron. So, don’t jump to conclusions next time you see a big white bird in south Florida, whether it is elegant:

or comical:.

PS As I was fact-checking this post, I discovered that in 2020 the Great White Heron was recognized as a separate species from the Great Blue Heron. It has been renamed Ardea occidentalis, and is considered by the IUCN to be Globally Endangered. There are less than 2500 left, and their shallow-water habitats are increasingly under threat. If you’re curious about how species decisions like this are made, read here: https://www.heronconservation.org/media/JHBC/vol07/07_01_Browning_and_Kushlan.pdf