Great Egret with Fresh Lunch 3

by Linda Brody

Title

Great Egret with Fresh Lunch 3

Artist

Linda Brody

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

Great Egret in the Neighborhood with Fresh Lunch.

After just catching this lizard, it was struggling for quite a while, twisting and curling itself around the Egret's beak in all manner of moves. Captured here the lizard is fighting in an upward motion.

We live about 15 miles from the pacific coast (Orange County, CA), but do have Irvine Lake and Peters Canyon (wildlife ecological areas) nearby. In the Spring of 2015, this Great Egret landed on a neighbor's yard, and I tracked it for about 2 hours while it casually and cautiously foraged for food. At first, I could not figure out what he was doing. But eventually he started catching western fence lizards and alligator lizards. I am used to seeing these shore birds at the water catching fish.

Some of the photos in this series are closeups of him catching/feeding on the lizards.

The elegant Great Egret is a dazzling sight in many a North American wetland. Slightly smaller and more svelte than a Great Blue Heron, these are still large birds with impressive wingspans. They hunt in classic heron fashion, standing immobile or wading through wetlands to capture fish with a deadly jab of their yellow bill. Great Egrets were hunted nearly to extinction for their plumes in the late nineteenth century, sparking conservation movements and some of the first laws to protect birds.

My Gallery of Shore Birds contains Snowy Egrets as well. They have a black beak and yellow feet, whereas the Great Egret has a yellow beak and black feet as seen here.

This photograph has been featured in the following Groups:
The Road to Self Promotion
Lady Photographers
Wild Birds of the World
A Birding Group - Wings
Nikon Full Frame Cameras
Images That Excite
FAA Bird Portraits
Nature Landmarks Landscape and Wildlife

Some of my artwork appears on products sold at Zazzle. Check out the following website: http://www.zazzle.com/linda116.

If you like my art, please take a moment to "like" and/or comment. I would be most appreciative if you would share on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, etc. This will help promote my art online and enable it to be found by others on internet searches. Thank you so much.

Uploaded

October 6th, 2016

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