SNOWY EGRET
by Walter L. Meagher
photos by Wayne Colony
The ‘Snowy’ is showy. If it were not, how could we tell it from the Great Egret, who has size, therefore greatness, on his side, an advantage the Snowy will never have, just as the Great Egret will never, never have a headdress, a tailwind of plumes for a lady’s hat, proper adornment in an Oscar Wilde play. But bird guides (Peterson and others) point to a more determinative way to tell the species apart (aside from size). 
One species has a black bill and orange feet (the Snowy); the other species (the Great) has an orange bill and black feet. This is neat, like algebra, the equation balanced. But in the field, birds flying by, perhaps in the gloaming, I wonder: Is the bill black? Is it the Snowy, or the other way round? A showy Snowy is unmistakeable, for it is more dainty than the Great, and was more prized by plume hunters. These two birds, and all members of the Heron Family, have certain common features. The most startling, surely, is the bill, a veritable dagger, the murder weapon in a play by Shakespeare. Stabbing fish, catching crayfish, snapping frogs, unites the family. Diet and the means to sustain it are one way to see a bird’s anatomy and behavior. 
I am sorry San Miguel is distressed by the problem of how to persuade egrets to live where it is more hygienic to human neighbors, but we must be glad of one thing: the passing of the plume trade. 
By the turn of the century, many millions of birds were being killed in the U.S. by plume hunters each year; the Audubon Society offered public lectures on such topics as ‘Woman as a bird enemy’. By World War I the plume trade had vanished. To what extent this was due to law, to public lectures, to changing fashion or cost we do not know. Surely the Audubon Society played a part, through public education, in ending the trade. Let us hope that the problem of egrets roosting and nesting in safety, in or out of our city, can soon be solved.
This is the season of egrets and ducks returning to the presa. Good birding!