EGRET, NOT SHY!
J and I were driving from breakfast to a small nature park on Kiawah island in South Carolina last week. We were almost to the gate when we realized we didn't have sunscreen, binoculars or anything else.
We turned the car around to head back to the hotel, when we drove by this great egret just hanging around a bridge. We were able to observe him amazingly close from our car window. J took these photos of him.
Great egrets are large herons found all over the world. Hunters in the late 1800s and early 1900s killed off 95 percent of the population in North America to use their feathers for clothing. Great egrets were almost extinct when two elderly women decided they wanted to protect the species, but women were not allowed to vote at the time. So they enlisted the help of a politician, who formed an organization with them and made it illegal to hunt these birds.Their population recovered nicely.This organization is now known as the Audubon Society.
The oldest great egret on record was 23 years old. These birds are not endangered, but are highly vulnerable to loss of their wetland habitat.
Comments
Holy cow! What cool electronic device could keep that from happening? Remind me not to walk my cat near estuaries! ;)
My friend was just telling me that some guy in town trained great blue herons to eat out of his hand. Bold.
I bet if I ask my dad, he'll have info on his family hunting and killing them for profit, based upon what you state. In the Ozarks, "rich city people" came to us, paying good money for trophies. We didn't hunt for trophies, only food. We were raised with strict prohibitions on killing young, mothers and animals that there's too few. But I'll have to ask him if we ever hunted herons or egrets. Weird!
I know, aren't they pretty? They remind me of snow.....it's the only time I like thinking about snow in August!
I think family histories are soooo cool. My late grandma would be the only one who could really know our history, I think we were farmers. Czech farmers. It must have been such a unique time! My grandma ate mayonaise sandwiches during the Depression.
Sorry to get off topic, LOL!
I don't call it ingenuity. I call it spite. :D
Robbbiedobbbie posted some pictures of a chipmunk in her area recently and I recalled not having a camera around when I spotted a heron, porcupine, and a beaver, all at different times and locations, and some when I was alone, some when I was with family.
The Columbia Basin, where I live, is where the Columbia, Snake, and Yakima rivers converge. Columbia Park in particular crosses a migratory area for birds, and so it's possible to do some great bird watching even though the park itself is in rather shabby condition in some sections, and many local citizens do not appreciate the ecological significance (especially when they write Letters to the Editor whining about the duck pond).
So interesting about the founding of the Audubon Society!
That's funny because I haven't seen hardly any blue herons this year. I miss the big guys. Actually in S.C. we saw lots of great blues after this one rain storm, maybe it stirs up the invertebrates that they munch on.
;)
I hope to remedy that very soon.
Beautiful !! The first photo is especially nice.
I live within miles of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Meramec Rivers. We have Great Blue Herons and other water birds here. They are so beautiful....it takes my breath away every time I see them.
23? Wow......
I never get to see these -- or other water ones - -no water around, not enough to supposrt big guys like this. Geese fly over.......we have lots of turkey buzzrads, hawks, owls........but these are so lovely!!