White Ghosts in Winter

Recently we've been seeing ghosts!

Can you see what it is yet?

These have been in the form of great big white birds flying around... especially in the snow. They shouldn't be here, according to the books!

Looks magnificent in the sun...

What we are referring to are Great Egrets or Great White Egrets [Egretta alba or, more correctly #, Ardea alba alba] Grande Aigrette. These, like the Little Egret, now breeding in the UK, are an expansion success story... spreading rapidly in the last ten or so years and wintering further north each year... as I type, the Birdguides weekly report for 2nd to 9th of February is showing 27 birds reported.... of which eight were flocked together in one location in Somerset. How long before Great White Egrets are breeding in Britain?

We've tried here to give some idea of the rate of expansion... too fast for distribution maps in bird books to keep up with:

Years	Winter [UK ]	Summer [UK]	Winter [Europe]	Summer [Europe]
1970s	Absent	Absent	Rare vagrant	Present [non-breeding]
1980s	Absent [Very rare vagrant]	Absent	Vagrant	Present [possibly breeding]
2000s	Rare vagrant [Winter visitor]	Very rare vagrant	Present	Breeding species
Current	Every year [numbers increasing]	Rare vagrant	Present	Breeding species [numbers increasing]

This expanding population throughout Europe means that Great White Egrets are now seen more frequently. They prefer all kinds of wetland habitats - even farmland ditches can attract them [they certainly seem to here]. They hunting for fish, frogs, small mammals, and occasionally small reptiles and insects, spearing them with their long, sharp, spear-like bill, most of the time by standing still and allowing the prey to come within  striking distance of the spear, or to slowly stalk a victim before stabbing downwards.

The Great White Egret is one of Europe's most graceful looking birds due to its impressive size and pure white plumage. It could conceivably be mistaken for the equally white Little Egret but it is the size of a Grey Heron, and has a longer, often kinked, neck.

Little Egret [note the BLACK beak and yellow feet]
Another one of my brother's photographs!

It builds a bulky stick nest [often in colonies] in trees close to large lakes, or fishponds, with extensive areas of reed beds or other extensive wetlands.

Partially migratory and dispersive. Most European birds migrate to North Africa and the middle East (especially Israel) but they are also wintering in increasing numbers around the Adriatic and even in Holland

There are four subspecies in various parts of the world, which differ but little. Differences are bare part coloration in the breeding season and size; the largest A. a. modesta from Asia and Australasia some taxonomists consider a full species, the Eastern Great Egret (Ardea modesta).:

    Ardea alba alba (Europe)
    Ardea alba egretta (Americas)
    Ardea alba melanorhynchos (Africa)
    Ardea alba modesta (India, Southeast Asia, and Oceania)

The slaughter of egrets for their plumes lead to the formation in Didsbury (near Manchester) of the Society for the Protection of Birds in 1889, it received a royal warrant 15 years later; its lady members used farmed ostrich feathers instead. [This from the BTO website!]

This is a record of an interaction between three Grey Herons and the Great Egret pictured above:

Calmly waiting by the pond opposite Bezuard.

First, one Grey Heron arrives....

...cutting in quite close.

Then two more, one even closer which disturbs the egret a bit... but watch out, one landed behind it! [on the right]

The egret settles back down... But the third Grey Heron is just open his wings to make his attack run....

Heron coming in fast.... and the egret decides to seek somewhere more peaceful to dine!

And flies off down the valley towards the Moulin de Cheverny!

And the crow and Tim watched it all.
We've blogged about these magnificent birds before but they've been either in the Brenne or just a sighting here but this fellow has been around for over a week now... forced to flowing water by the frozen ground and étangs... nice for us, but I hope it gets more food now the 'melt's come.
Missed a lovely shot today [I had the binos... not the camera]... it came down our meadow, barely twenty feet from the house!!



Sources for this info: Collins "Bird Guide" 2000 [the 1st edition], Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, British Trust for Ornithology and Birdguides  websites and Wiki.

Other good source of information on the Egret is Go Birding.

# This is yet another re-classification*... I heartily wish they wouldn't!! 
*The Great Egret—unlike the typical egrets—does not belong to the genus Egretta but together with the great herons is today placed in Ardea. In the past, however, it was sometimes placed in Egretta or separated in a monotypic genus Casmerodius. [Wiki]