Hi, On some Saturday mornings, I drop my daughter off to her tennis fixtures and then go to the Rockhampton Botanic Gardens with the scope to see what interesting things have taken up residence in Murray and Yeppen lagoons. This morning, as well as seeing the largest flock of Freckled Ducks I have seen here (about 60 birds with the bills on the males coloured up nicely), I also encountered a very unusual looking egret – a mixture of brilliant white and dark grey blue. The wings and head were white with only a few blue flecks in the wings but the body and much of the neck was dark. The legs were a bright yellow/green. In terms of size and behaviour (very active feeding and short flights around the area), it was a perfect match for a Little Egret – which is a commonly sighted bird in the area although I didn’t actually see one (properly white) this morning. Unfortunately, the bird was at the far north-western end of Yeppen Lagoon which is private property so I had to be satisfied with viewing from some 200 metres away on the public walking path from the gardens through Diggers Park. Visually, it was very spectacular with the contrasting coloured features and I tried to take some photos through the scope … very marginal and they do not do the bird justice at all … I have uploaded a few very heavily cropped images to … https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=61ABDA2F45E96BC7!1728&authkey=!ACleOrOmY1fu84Q&ithint=folder%2cjpg … apologies for the terrible image quality. This evening going through HBW Alive (www.hbw.com) , I see that there can be dark morphs of Little Egrets although they don’t have any photos or plates of anything other than the standard white form. A Google Image search turns up quite a few relatively uniform dark Little Egret images – they look something like a dark morph Reef Egret reshaped as a Little Egret. In amongst them, I see a few images tagged as ‘Intermediate Morph’ Little Egrets – particularly on www.orientalbirdimages.org and mostly from India and Sri Lanka. Most of these birds are really rather streaky and gradual in colour gradation between white and dark and none of them have yellow legs. But I guess the lesson here is that they can be rather variable. I haven’t been able to find any reference to non-white morphs of the Intermediate or Plumed Egret* but the size and behaviour really lead me to doubt that it is anything other than Egretta garzetta. (* I see that HBW have split up the Intermediate Egret into three species and the Australian form is given its old name again … I wasn’t aware of this nor if it is widely accepted or not). So my question to Birding Aus readers is … What is your experience of non-white Little Egrets in Australia or abroad? How unusual is it? (Generally, I don’t see that many unusual things when I go bird watching 😊) Thanks, Steve Kerr. Sent from Windows Mail
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There’ve been sightings of a few Pied Herons up here in the Top End, in strange plumages. They looked like hybrids, but generally still had the jig of Pied Heron. This one doesn’t look quite right for Pied Heron to me. Denise Lawungkurr Goodfellow PO Box 71 Darwin River, NT, Australia 0841 043 8650 835 PhD candidate, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW. Founding Member: Ecotourism Australia Nominated by Earthfoot for Condé Nast’s International Ecotourism Award, 2004. With every introduction of a plant or animal that goes feral this continent becomes a little less unique, a little less Australian. On 28 Jun 2015, at 9:45 am, Thomas Wilson < wilsonsinoz@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
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Hi Steve Good spot – always something challenging in the world of birding. I am not sure what HBW says about leg colour in dark morphs, but I would expect a Little Egret to have dark legs. The yellow legs and the last photo where the birds looks smaller than the accompanying (and slightly further away) Glossy Ibis would make me think that you possibly found a Pied Heron in a strange plumage? Cheers Tom Wilson Steve Kerr wrote: …I also encountered a very unusual looking egret – a mixture of brilliant white and dark grey blue. The wings and head were white with only a few blue flecks in the wings but the body and much of the neck was dark. The legs were a bright yellow/green. In terms of size and behaviour (very active feeding and short flights around the area), it was a perfect match for a Little Egret – which is a commonly sighted bird in the area although I didn’t actually see one (properly white) this morning. … I have uploaded a few very heavily cropped images to … https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=61ABDA2F45E96BC7!1728&authkey=!ACleOrOmY1fu84Q&ithint=folder%2cjpg …This evening going through HBW Alive (www.hbw.com) , I see that there can be dark morphs of Little Egrets although they don’t have any photos or plates of anything other than the standard white form. A Google Image search turns up quite a few relatively uniform dark Little Egret images – they look something like a dark morph Reef Egret reshaped as a Little Egret. In amongst them, I see a few images tagged as ‘Intermediate Morph’ Little Egrets – particularly on http://www.orientalbirdimages.org and mostly from India and Sri Lanka. Most of these birds are really rather streaky and gradual in colour gradation between white and dark and none of them have yellow legs. But I guess the lesson here is that they can be rather variable. I haven’t been able to find any reference to non-white morphs of the Intermediate or Plumed Egret* but the size and behaviour really lead me to doubt that it is anything other than Egretta garzetta. (* I see that HBW have split up the Intermediate Egret into three species and the Australian form is given its old name again … I wasn’t aware of this nor if it is widely accepted or not).
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