Hipster Birders: Reddish Egrets of Fort De Soto

As you may have seen in a couple of our previous posts about Royal Terns mating, here and here, Nick and I took a lovely trip to Ft. De Soto this past April. Here, we encountered a nice array of shorebirds and wading birds, some new and some old favorites. One particular favorite that we don't really run into in South Florida (in our experience, anyway) is the Reddish Egret. We've had some nice encounters when we've gone up a little north in Florida, like on Merritt Island, but we've never seen them around our neck of the woods. While we were in Ft. De Soto, we had some really lovely and really close encounters with a few.

Pair of breeding Reddish Egrets - One White Morph and One Dark Morph

While walking along the beach at the north end, we were pleasantly surprised to see a Reddish Egret close by walking along the shore. We saw him tussling about with what we at first thought was a Great Egret, a Snowy Egret, or maybe even a young Little Blue heron in its white phase... But lo and behold, it was another Reddish Egret, but a white morph! This was the first time we had seen a white morph Reddish Egret, and it was quite a beauty! One of the local birders advised that these two were a mating pair. He advised that the dark morph (the more common morph) was the male and the white morph was the female, which I'm not sure was true or if he had just assigned them those sexes because of their colors. But anyway, their behavior certainly did pinpoint them as a couple, and they were very fun to watch.

Pair of breeding Reddish Egrets - One White Morph and One Dark Morph

Reddish Egret (dark morph) taking off (Notice the white morph counterpart in the corner)

White morph Reddish Egret

Along another stretch of beach on the south end of Ft. De Soto, we came across another shaggy Reddish Egret who entertained us a great deal! I was actually crawling on my belly along some grasses on the beach getting shots of a couple of Red-breasted Mergansers that were out of the water and preening on the shoreline (which is kind of a funny site to see, but more on that in another post), and then this Reddish Egret came along and put on quite a show. We have watched one foraging for food before, but not this closely and not as attentively. Nick joined me while laying belly down on the beach, and we watched this funny egret display his characteristic feeding tactics.

Reddish Egret foraging

Reddish Egret foraging (Notice the breeding colors of the bill)

Shaggy Reddish Egret foraging

Reddish Egret darting back to chase some food

If you've ever seen a Reddish Egret feed, he seems to play a little game of "cat and mouse." We watched as this egret would tip toe in one direction along the shore ever so coolly, and then turn and run back really fast to try to catch some food. We've also recently seen a very helpful video that discusses the different types of feeding behavior of shorebirds and wading birds, and it said that Reddish Egrets are actually running about corralling its prey to make an easier catch.

Reddish Egret standing tall and displaying his fluffed-up, shaggy head

Reddish Egret spreading his wings around him as he forages

Reddish Egret foraging

This Reddish Egret displayed the typical foraging behavior of standing tall and fluffing up his head and spreading his wings out in a circle around him. We lay there chuckling to ourselves as we watched this funny bird continue to do this for some time. The lighting, for the most part, was not great for clear shots of the bird, but I did get some great silhouette shots that nicely displayed the Reddish Egret's foraging behavior. And we did get some nice video, too.