Dan's Feathursday Feature: Snowy Egret

I do not like mosquitoes, or ticks, or chiggers, or any of a variety of tiny flying and crawling and biting insects. It’s a serious dislike, bordering on maniacal. One buzzing mosquito in the bedroom will keep me up all night if that’s how long it takes to catch it. A hotel room in Rome, with neither air conditioning nor screens on the windows, is probably decorated still with the splotches of the fifty-plus zanzare that I dispatched during one sleepless summer night decades ago.

That’s one reason I like winter, and snow. As I walk my favorite lakefront park in the dead of winter, the icy wind may make my ears so cold I dare not touch them for fear of snapping them off, but I am content. There are no mosquitoes.

Unfortunately, there are also few birds.

Contrary to what its name might lead you to think, one bird you certainly will not see on a wind-swept snowy lakefront is the Snowy Egret. Unlike the Snowy Owl or the Snow Bunting or the Snow Goose, whose names reflect those species’ preference for places snowy, the Snowy Egret wants nothing to do with the white powder. It’s a bird of lakes and marshes and coastlines—warm lakes and marshes and coastlines.

Snowy Egret is an unlikely name for a bird of warm climes, until you see one. Then you realize that there is not a better adjective to describe this elegant bird. Its pure white body, accented by a black beak, is held aloft on thin black legs—like the tuft of snow that forms on the top of a cattail during a windless snowfall. In flight, the long black legs trail behind, showing off bright orange feet, as if competing with the snow-white body for your attention. When a Snowy Egret struts into a crowded marsh, all the other herons and egrets melt into the background. In breeding season, when the male sports long, wispy feathers on its back and neck, it takes on the frigid look of wind-blown snow. The Snowy Egret is a cool bird.

Almost too cool for its own good. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Snowy Egret’s beautiful white plumes were worth twice their weight in gold to the fashionistas who just had to have those feathers in their caps. Hunters spurred by this get-rich-quick opportunity shot the Snowy Egrets for their plumes, and the bird’s numbers melted away faster than an April snow. We can thank environmental activists of a hundred years ago for ending the slaughter with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which made it illegal to “pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill,… possess,… sell,… purchase,… or export, at any time, or in any manner, any migratory bird, included in the terms of this Convention…for the protection of migratory birds…or any part, nest, or egg of any such bird." (16 U.S.C. 703)

Thanks to this treaty, the Snowy Egret rebounded from near extinction and is now listed as a species of “low concern” by conservationists. You’ll have a better chance of seeing one if you head to the Gulf of Mexico and all the southern and southeastern coastal areas. But the Snowy Egret is also a rare visitor to the Chicago region during the migration periods. At your favorite marsh, among the Great Blue Herons and the Great Egrets, look for a smaller bird, with snow-white body, black bill and black legs. And when it picks those feet up, you can’t miss the bright orange toes.

Right now, with piles of February's snow still decorating our cityscape, it’s hard to imagine that the day might come when we’ll actually be wishing for snow. But I know from experience that four short months from now, when I’m up to my knees in algae-covered water in a hot, sticky Chicagoland marsh, with mosquitoes attacking every square inch of exposed skin, and bloodthirsty leeches and ticks waiting behind every reed, I just might find myself singing: “…but since I’ve no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!” And if the winds blow just right, and the gods of birding smile on me that hot and humid day, a rare Snowy Egret might grace me with its cooling presence.

But not today. We’ve had enough snow already this winter.

Dan's Feathursday Feature is a regular contribution to the COS blog featuring the thoughts, insights and pictures of Chicago birder, Dan Lory on birds of the Chicago region.