Two Firsts

Today I bring you two firsts, well, at least in my adult life starting with our recent trip down to Springfield, IL for a CPE Agility trail at the state fairgrounds. This is a homecoming for me as I was born and raised there and have spent countless hours hanging out at the fair while growing up. Some kids hang out at the malls or local car-hops, Springfieldians have acres and acres of dangerous as hell rides, rigged games, farm animals and temporary carney/fair girls (don’t ask) to keep us entertained. We do not get down there very often these days now that my parents are no longer with us, so a chance to walk the grounds and recall childhood memories is “usually” a fun time – until last weekend. In short I ended up getting “swarmed” by self-important sheriff deputies apparently so bad at their jobs they are reduced to protecting pavement and empty buildings. Glossing over most of the encounter to keep your eyes from rolling too much, but I decided to get a walk in between the boy’s runs heading out to the conservation area having familiar windy paths, a small pond and lots of trees for….yes, birds! Thought I heard a Fish Crow which is unusual there, so whipped out Merlin which confirmed it putting me on the hunt. Walked through the always open gates at the back scanning the trees and water for the rarity. No Crow, but noticed a black car following me around trying to be discrete – not good at it – game on. I’d take a path away from it and it would have to creep back and navigate back to another position to watch me. When the car got to the new place I’d change direction causing another move….this went on for a while – keep in mind I still had my phone out with Merlin hunting birds. Reinforcements were called in and I see an ATV pull up in a nearby parking lot, guy in black car pulls up to it, guy jumps out, has an excited discussion with the ATV occupants, all jump in the ATV and come after me – they got me now. I am practically laughing now as they pull up and demand to know what I am doing – “I’m looking for birds” and show him the list of birds Merlin has already found (and cleverly still recording so I had an audio track for whatever was coming down). He intently looks at the screen and proclaims an individual saw me and said I was acting “suspicious” and wanted to know how I got here. “Through that open gate over there” – mind you there is NO gate on the other end so the state of that gate is irrelevant. I get some okay we are just checking out the situation garble and they leave clearly disappointed they were denied the highlight of their year. This was all rich coming from a declared sanctuary state and apparently it is the victim’s fault if you are gunned down taking a walk in Chicago (link here). Not to mention the humorous fact my grandfather was a police chief of Spfld, uncle fire chief, cousin police dispatcher, youth baseball coaches were sergeants on the force. Saved the Merlin recording of the interaction and continued my walk more confident in my young decision to choose a career elsewhere.

Fortunately, my other first is far more exciting, a breeding Reddish Egret.

Hit the jump to read more about this second installment of Breeding Plumage in honor of April.

If you recall, in my last post the star of the show was a breeding Tricolored Heron showing off its “goods” in hopes of wooing the opposite sex. That transformation into their neon blue bills sighting was courtesy of a spring trip to Texas. Needless to say, that wasn’t the only species putting on their frisky seeking digs while we were down there.

The dark morph (the more common) Reddish Egret also takes on brighter hues for the mating season. Like the Tricolored Heron, the lores (space between the eyes and the bill) turn a neon blue, however, a stunning pink shade extends out to near the end of the bill where it transitions back to their traditional dark coloring to the tip.

Their shaggy manes and neck also get more voluminous as new plumes emerge with a brighter rufous tone clearly radiating it’s time to put on the dancing shoes and hit the clubs. You can’t see it due to the fluffy feathering, but they have their top buttons undone to prominently display their gold chains while humming the Bee Gees.

For the curious, these shots were taken at Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center in Port Aransas, Texas. There isn’t much else that can be said about this incredible hotspot that I haven’t already covered in the numerous posts I’ve made about the feathered treasures that can be found there. Pretty sure other birders that have had the opportunity to visit this location would concur – if you haven’t been there, go – especially now that the American Flamingo has decided to take up residence – except for the one week we were down there this year when it decided to go visit relatives AAARRRGGGHH!!!

Now, the odd element to this sighting is I usually post on the white morphs that seem to be in abundance at this particular spot (link here). In fact, I am not sure I have ever featured a dark morph Reddish Egret from this particular location (note, later confirmed this was a true statement). As a result, this ended up sending me down a giant rabbit hole with regards to the breeding plumage of the white morph variety.

The scintillating question was whether the white morph takes on the same color changes as the dark morph based on the absence of the coloring as a result of the gene difference. Hours later and about 80 tabs open on my browser, I can concur with a majority of the content on those tabs – “Only a general overview of its behavior and breeding biology is known” (link here). Note, that Cornell: Birds of the World link also has a reference to a study done in 1960 by Meyerriecks, but that link is dead.

I will simply summarize my takeaways from reading waaay to much. First, about 99.5% of the reference material simply states there are two morphs followed by ever-helpful (sarcasm) pictures of the two morphs. Wikipedia (which I pretty much detest anyway) gets my award for stupidest reference link which simply explains what a “species description” is.. thnx. Stated many times was the fact that the Reddish Egret is the rarest in all the Ardeidae family and by association knowing that the White Morph is roughly 7% (I’ve seen this number referenced up to 20%) of the Reddish population as a whole means the multiple whites at Leonabelle and South Padre Island Birding Center is a real treat (link here).

The most helpful resource I found was at Birdful (link here). I do not know much about this site but I have used some of their references in the past, maybe even their Reddish Egret page – the bad news is it looks like they stopped adding new content back in July of 2025. Their Reddish Egret breeding page had the most info on it (link here). Again, I am taking their word for it. This page states that the morphs are due to “a single locus autosomal gene with two alleles. The dark morph is the partially dominant phenotype”. More intriguing is the white morph was likely first and the advantage of the dark morph for hunting became the natural selection (add in the fashion trade impact). Oh, and white and dark morphs regularly intermingle in nests and mates which was a question I had in previous post. Oh right, I was trying to find you an answer on the breeding color changes of the whites…here is their entry:

“During the breeding season, the bill becomes two-toned with a black tip and blue-gray base. The legs become pinkish-red. The lores (the region between the eye and bill) may show a barely perceptible reddish or pinkish color. The irises of the eyes are yellow. Outside of breeding season, the white morph has uniformly slate gray legs and all yellow eyes.“

In my observation, I have never seen the legs turn a pinkish/red – per the pictures above so that was a bit odd. After all this, my conclusion is you will see the white morphs take on a similar pinkish hue to their bill as the dark morphs, but the blueing on the lores is significantly diminished. I’m officially exhausted ha. It just occurred to me this type of research would be a much better use of time for the fairground security force.

If I did my job right, you are currently visualizing the white morphs with their top buttons down and gold chains showing ala John Travolta hehehe. Take care everyone, hope you enjoyed another look at the breeding transformations of the large wading birds.