That Must Hurt…by Brad Marks

Normally about this time I would be cursing Father Time for secretly removing days out of the month leaving me scrambling to get posts out to hit our quota. A little different this month as I am quite ecstatic to turn the page on this rather painful month. Although, yesterday morning I was wearing a grin from ear to ear. Linda and I kept a long tradition going for what is now the 19th consecutive year. Will cover this more thoroughly on the Mothership in the coming weeks. In short, the Quad Cities Bix 7 was held in downtown Davenport, IA (link here). This beast of a hill course was the first race I ever entered and thus holds a special place in my heart. Linda walked the Quick Bix (2 miles) and I was ordered by …hmmm, how did Wally (link here) put it… oh yeah SWMBO (She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed) to at MOST walk the 7 miles now being a mere 4 weeks out from surgery (truth be told, she was rather insistent I walk the 2 mile with her and glad she finally relented to accept the 7). With elbow brace in place, lined up with the other 10,000+ runners, cheered as the starter gun rang out and headed out to battle the hill demons. Crossed the finish line around 1:07. Now before Linda (and anyone else) does the math on that and figures out my “little secret” I am going to once again turn you over to Brad to close this month out properly. While scanning through his queue I noticed this title and it was an absolute prefect fit. Take care everyone, see you in August (assuming nobody snitches on me and gets me in trouble ha).

Take it away Brad…

It has been a few months since we visited South Carolina during a cold Illinois winter.  I’m still sorting through photos and remembering stories about the birds we saw.  We aren’t snowbirds like generations before us.  We just needed to do something outside, during February, without having to wear a parka.  Plus, South Carolina was a brand-new state for us to visit.

While passing dozens of signs for the next mini-golf experience (Myrtle Beach is mini-golf capital of the U.S.), we headed south from Myrtle Beach to find Huntington Beach State Park.

After paying our very reasonable entrance fee, we drove across the causeway and parked the car.  I assembled the cameras and mounted the big glass on my monopod.  We headed to the observation deck next to the causeway.  Today’s subject was flying above the tidal marsh, but ended up banking in our direction near the brackish water pond.

Great Egret by Brad Marks

Hit the jump to learn more about today’s featured guest!

This great egret (Ardea alba) gracefully landed in the shallows.  Once it carefully folded its nearly 65-inch wingspan, the egret began looking for breakfast.  Great egrets, like most wading birds, spend the majority of their waking hours searching for food.

Great Egret by Brad Marks

This photo reminds me of seeing video of the Concorde landing. We can only guess it already had permission to land from the control tower; its wings are outstretched, landing gear is down, and the “fuselage” is bent forward. Large wading birds look very graceful while flying or moving around in shallow water. Anything in between is rather awkward. Once they are stable in the shallows, great egrets go straight for the food.

Great egrets have a rather aggressive hunting style.  They will walk slowly through the shallows looking for fish.  Once an egret spots a potential meal, they become very still.  Maybe this is to lull the fish into a false sense of security.  Or maybe it’s to spring load their faces for the attack.

Great Egret by Brad Marks

To the untrained observer, it looks like their very sharp bill breaks the surface of the water to lessen the impact on the rest of their face.  One can certainly hope.

Great Egret by Brad Marks

This particular egret was successful catching a small snack.  Can you spot the small unlucky fish near the end of its bill?  I believe great egrets have a much higher success rate catching fish than photographers do taking a photo of them catching fish.  Though we (OK, it was Jan) did get a few photos of great egrets with rewards for their effort.  We normally saw them slowly wading through the shallow water, admiring themselves in their reflection.  Do these feathers make me look fat?

Great Egret by Brad Marks

In actuality, they never really stop hunting for food.  A great egret is a piscivore, eating mostly fish.  They will occasionally eat crustaceans, amphibians, small reptiles, or small mammals if they are available.  Great egrets will chase away competitors, or photographers, that annoy them.

Great Egret by Brad Marks

A tricolored heron from a prior story (link here) decided to see what the great egret was up to.  Moments before, they had both been motionless, making a rather nice photo.  The tricolored decided to push things just a little too far, causing the great egret to react swiftly.  Egrets and herons don’t normally move very quickly.  In this case, both birds moved several feet in the blink of a shutter.

To make the nomenclature from the Department of Obvious Names (DON) even more confusing, great egrets are known by many names.  A few of their Olde World aliases include:  common egret, large egret, great white egret, or great white heron.

Great egrets have very long airy-looking feathers (called aigrettes, a French word thought to be the source of the egret’s name) used during mating displays.  Unfortunately, these feathers were prized for decorations in the late 19th and early 20th century.  Hundreds of thousands of egrets of all kinds were killed in large-scale slaughters for an ounce of feathers from each bird.  Fortunately for the birds, the Audubon Society helped convince lawmakers to pass laws making the feather trade illegal.  Thankfully, the great egret has made a recovery, but not quite to their former numbers.

I still think they count their feathers every now and then to see if any are missing.  Two thousand and six, two thousand and seven . . .

Great Egret by Brad Marks

At 2-3 years of age, great egrets will begin mating.  Males choose the nesting locations and build the nests, usually 100 feet up in a sturdy tree very near water.  The pair are monogamous for the breeding season, and will incubate 1-6 eggs for 3-4 weeks.  The chicks hatch over the course of a few days.  This usually means the earliest chick hatched has the best chance of survival.  Since the chicks compete fiercely with each other, weaker siblings do not survive.  Chicks can leave the nest at 4 weeks and fly at about 6-7 weeks.  Once the kids are out of the house, a nesting pair may raise another brood during the same breeding season.

Not really caring if we were watching or not, this one saw a fish, and took advantage of the opportunity to make a graceful exit.  And to catch another snack.

Great Egret by Brad Marks

Thank you for reading.  If you want to see more bird photos from our South Carolina winter escape, please visit here.

Credits

Thanks again to Jan and Allyson for proofreading and editing.  Thanks to Jan for most of the photos in this article. 

46 thoughts on “That Must Hurt…by Brad Marks”

  2. Hmmm! You took BIX7 quite literally. It seemed some of your winged friends, or those wings on your heels helped you along.

    Great Great Egret photos, Brad. That must hurt the way that one is poking itself. They were reflecting on 42.

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    1. Thanks Tim. Jan did a great job; patiently watching for the bird’s signals to take these award winning photos. (I’m sure there’s an award somewhere)

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            1. We stopped doing the bigger competitions years ago. Linda and I usually just enter our local fair competition as just a bragging rights challenge between ourselves. I am disappointed to admit Linda beat me this year so I have that to listen to for a WHOLE year!

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            2. I never entered photos in the fair, but we used enter roses and rose arrangements in the fair when the Rose Society fall rose show was part of the State Fair. All three of us won all kinds of awards for rose arrangments. I was really happy the first time I won Queen of Show, because I knew it would really bug Laurie’s brother, who thought arranging roses was not very manly.

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            3. I remember you mentioned that you had done well in those competitions – you should wear those ribbons every time you visit Laurie’s brother and just point to them if he gives you any crap.

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    2. I didn’t want to throw away 18 years of consecutive runnings of their flagship race..not to mention with this one I will get a special pin for the 20th next year…Linda claims I am a medal whore hehehe. Something definitely helped me get through – likely just the frustration of having to miss the big ultra last month. Good news I can start training hard for the October 100K barring any words to the contrary during my visit with the doctor next week. May have to slip him some greenbacks under the table when Linda isn’t looking.

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  4. Your reference to the Great White Heron was interesting… that is actually a different species, found only in Florida. It is larger than the Great Egret, and has yellow legs instead of black, but otherwise looks almost identical. The DON (Dept of Obfuscating Names) has not made naming of herons or egrets (which are different names for the same thing) any easier! Congrats to Jan and you both for capturing some great photos – I especially like the one of the egret counting his feathers!

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    1. Thank you Sam, we had fun taking them. The DON seems to use different to keep us on our toes. I’d like to see a GWH sometime, then my keywords in LR would be really messed up. Thanks for dropping by Sam.

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  8. I don’t often see a Great Egret and here is a beautiful series of this amazing bird fishing, flying, preening and just patiently looking for fish. Brad, these are such beautiful moments and photographs!

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  9. Brian, BTW, 7 miles in 1:07 is a bit quicker than a walk. Uphill no less. Even our old business managers could have figured that one out.

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    1. Are you sure your math is right, maybe double check that, make a powerpoint presentation with your findings and present to me at the next meeting which I will reschedule minutes before you are supposed to present and then make sure the reschedule is on top of one of your other important meetings causing a cascaded of wasted rescheduling steps that consume far more time than it would have been had I simply trusted your first results. Thought I’d give you full corporate experience hehehehe.

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  11. It’s been fun to follow your adventures along the coast.

    I find it fascinating to watch the different hunting techniques used by the various wading birds. The Great Egret always seems to be pretty nonchalant about things. Almost like she’s ignoring that school of minnows – almost. Then she strikes and she ain’t nonchalant no more!

    Great photographs!

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    1. Thanks Wally. It was fun to have both cameras capturing photos as fast as their shutters would cycle. Jan was often pointing in a different direction, capturing different angles or birds. The egret was much closer than my lens could focus (without just looking at the birds eyes) so Jan captured most of the images with the medium zoom. I think I just have to sit back and think of words to go with the photos. (Shhh, don’t tell her that)

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    1. Hi, they will eventually arrive. A friend of mine sees them late morning and mid-late afternoons on the river near his house. The eagles and hawks take the other times. When they do show themselves, I expect to see a story here about them. 🙂

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