heron and egrets ~ 12/19/13 ~ Rec Trail

black-crowned night heron
Nycticorax nycticorax

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great egret
Ardea alba

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snowy egret
Egretta thula

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I never used to look up in the trees while walking along the water, because I was so focused on otters and harbor seals.  One day I startled a night heron near the Coast Guard Pier, and I watched it fly off to perch in a tree.  From then on, I kept an eye on the tree.  Lo and behold, there's a small group of 4 trees, 3 cypress and 1 willow, each with its own night heron for most of the last half of this year.  I wonder if I'll get to see them make a nest or two in the coming months.  Once I started looking up, I also started seeing lots of great egrets and great blue herons (not pictured here) perched all along the Rec Trail. Whoa!  How could I have been so blind to all these large birds above my head?  I don't know if it's only my new found awareness, or if the herons and egrets are actually numerous this year.  For certain, I have seen more snowy egrets than in years past.  They're all so elegant and fashionable.

great egret
Ardea alba

Often great egrets look much like snowy egrets (Egretta thula), especially from a distance and in photographs when the sense of size is misleading. For a really nice little table on how to tell the two birds apart and additional photos from this same area of what I prefer to call Pacific Grove Shoreline Park, check out Bread on the Water.

cormorant, heron, egret ~ 06/26/09 ~ Heron Rookery Natural Preserve

I would imagine this is a North American birder's paradise. How could you not pass up the opportunity to see so many fantastic birds nesting? Other signs also indicated the snowy egret nested here, too. This rookery is within a 5 minute walk to the Morro Bay State Park Museum of Natural History. I am incredibly sad all these state parks are closing!!! Our friendly museum volunteer is in charge of some big birding shindig where people from around the world gather to observe the incredible bird diversity in Morro Bay. I signed up for her e-mail notice and will post here once I find out specifics for the event. She said they're having some difficulty figuring out alternatives to state park sites for their field trips.

double-crested cormorant
Phalacrocorax auritus

I find it fascinating these cormorants nest in trees versus the rocks of our Monterey area Brandt's cormorants. How do web feet cling onto tree branches?

great blue heron
Ardea herodias

Behind a church here in Monterey, there's a 3-year old nesting site for great blue herons. Whenever I visit my friend, I look out my sun roof to see if I can spot one of them in the nests. The nesting site is easy to spot because now most of the trees around the nests are dead.

great egret
Ardea alba

More often than not, signs do a much better job than I ever could at explaining things. Click on the photo above and you'll get a larger image for reading.

great and snowy egrets ~ 06/25/09 ~ Morro Strand Beach

great egret
Ardea alba

snowy egret
Egretta thula

It was unexpected to see the 2 types of "egrets" side-by-side hunting in the water in such numbers. If I didn't know better, I would have thought the larger ones were the adults and the smaller ones were its young. Love the yellow feet of the snowy egret.

great egret ~ 03/06/09 ~ Montaña De Oro

great egret
Ardea albaArdeidae

I don't particularly like the common name, b/c it's a heron and the name gets many people confused with the smaller, yellow-footed, snowy egret (genus Egretta).