What’s In My Backyard?

Lake Friends: snowy egret

For the introduction to this series, see here

Look at this well-dressed bird! This is a snowy egret looking for lunch on a local pond. These small herons hunt fish, crustaceans, and frogs in shallow water. Sometimes the birds use their bright-colored feet to stir up prey hiding in the mud before catching it in its sharp black beak. During the breeding season, the birds grow a huge cloud of lacy feathers on their head, neck, and back. These beautiful feathers almost made the bird go extinct in the late 1800’s. At that time, fashionable ladies would buy hats trimmed with egret feathers. The only way to harvest the feathers was to kill the birds. Thousands of these little herons were shot before conservationist groups began to protest. The feathers were so sought after that, for a while, they were worth more than gold. The feathers cost $32 an ounce! That was twice what an ounce of gold was worth! Fortunately, people realized how foolish it was to kill these beautiful birds and they are now very common again. Look for these birds on shallow ponds and streams in summer.