Slowly I turned (Said the Snowy Egret)

Step by step, inch by inch.....

The Snowy Egret is such a beautiful bird. I’ve already shared several posts about the Egret. Today, you’re in for more views showing this bird as it hunted. One morning, a friend and I were at Sweetwater and saw the Snowy Egret in a new location. We watched it for a long time as it hunted from one specific place, moving no more than a few feet at a time in each direction, circling around, turning back and forth. You can see from this photograph that it is crossing its legs. Its body is heading in one direction but its head and neck are heading in a different direction.

As you may see from the photograph above and from the following photographs, the Snowy Egret remains in virtually the same location but ever so slowly turns back-and-forth, positioning itself in search of underwater prey. Its behavior reminded me very much of an old Three Stooges skit titled “Niagara Falls.” The classic line from The Stooges was “Slowly I turned, step-by-step, inch-by-inch.“ You can watch the skit here. The Three Stooges did this for laughs. The Snowy Egret does this as a way to hunt prey successfully.

Here it is again, leaning forward, close to the water, and bringing its golden foot forward, ever so slowly stepping into the water.

Then it turned back the other way. Ducking under low hanging reeds, it continued to creep forward in a constant search for underwater prey. The Snowy Egret was looking for both mosquito fish and/or dragonfly nymphs. It was finding much to eat using this method.

“Which way should I go?”, it thought, with long breeding plumes dangling off the back of its head.

Sometimes the Egret did just stop and rest. In this position with its head and neck tucked in, more long breeding plumes flow down from its chest. Besides the telltale golden feet, Snowy Egrets have a black bill which differs from the look of similarly white Great Egrets. Great Egrets have a long yellow/orange bill.

And back to the hunt. Slowly it crept, step-by-step, inch-by-inch.....

A few weeks later when I was watching the Bald Eagle, my afternoon was interrupted by a flyover of a Snowy Egret. Sweetwater Wetlands is on the east side of the Santa Cruz river and Danny Lopez Park, with its large lake, is just across the river from Sweetwater Wetlands. Many birds move back-and-forth between the two large bodies of water. I think the odds are very good that this flying Snowy Egret was the same one that I had seen hunting in Sweetwater just a few weeks earlier.

The Snowy egret circled the lake. It wasn’t stepping this time, but perhaps it was thinking “slowly I flew, flap by flap....”

It was nice to have an encore appearance of a Snowy Egret.