a tale of two egrets

Ellen Frank tells me about a small egret that she saw a couple of days ago that had two long plumes down the back and bright orange (not yellow) feet. Unfortunately she didn't note the color of the lores (the area around the eyes) and there is no photo. I say 'unfortunately' because there is a good chance that this was a Little Egret and not a Snowy. Little Egret is the equivalent of the closely-related Snowy Egret throughout Eurasia and the Littles also breed on Barbados and Antigua. It's not easy to separate the two species as they overlap in many details. I've had two Snowy Egrets with the double plumes (one was photographed); both had yellow lores and yellow feet and the consensus was that they were aberrant Snowies (or, as I tend to think, hybrids). A favorite sport of the on-line bird community is shooting down reports of Little Egrets on Long Island and, I believe that, although there a number of reports, there is still no accepted record for New York State (although there are accepted records for all the other Atlantic states). While it is possible that there are local Snowy Egrets whose feet turn orange in high breeding plumage, that is not likely to last very long and we are now well out of breeding season. I have the idea (not sure of the source) that the Little Egrets in the Caribbean have a longer breeding season which would suggest that there might be birds from that location that are still in breeding plumage.

Eric Salzman