D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
September 2009
Snowy Egrets
Page: 2
With the male guarding their nest, the female will lay three to five bluish-green, inch-and-a-half-long eggs over several days, usually one egg every other day. Taking turns, both parents incubate the eggs for the next three to three and a half weeks, until their entire brood has hatched. Meticulous housekeepers, the parents remove the eggshells, and they continually clean up after their messy young.
Concerned and caring parents, the snowy egrets brood their naked, blind and helpless hatchlings continuously for the first couple of weeks. They protect them in the event of a storm. They use their wings to shade them from the hot summer sun. The parents feed their young by regurgitating food directly into the clamoring mouths or into the nests. "Either the father or the mother watches the youngsters constantly," according to Bent, "and when the absent mate returns they caress and coo, being a most loving pair, as if they had not seen each other for a week." The returning bird performs an elaborate greeting ceremony, utilizing its plumes to reassure its mate and the young that it is not an unknown intruder.
The rapidly growing young birds, their flight feathers erupting, move into the branches beside their nest within three to four weeks after hatching. They stretch their wings, responding to the call to take flight. Although they return in the evening to their nurturing parents for several days, they soon will take their departure, leaving home for good.
For all their parents' loving care, the young snowy egrets face daunting odds during their first year, with as many as three-quarters dying due to predation, starvation, accident, exposure or parasitism. Those that do survive the first year may live for as long as 15 years or more. According to the Animal Diversity site, the oldest egret was recorded in Utah and lived 22 years, 10 months.
In its elegant plumed dress, the snowy egret — the "most charming of all our marsh birds" — became the envy of late 19th and early 20th century American women, who yearned to adorn themselves in the ephemeral feathers so they could, I guess, look like herons. The snowy egret's plumes, sold into the fashion industry at commercial auction houses, fetched $32 to $80 per ounce. Gold, by comparison, sold for about $16 per ounce.
Snowy egret rookeries became scenes of bloody slaughters, the work of the plume hunters, who hoped to capitalize on the trade. A.H.E. Mattingley, quoted by Bent, reported on what he found at one rookery: "There, strewn on the floating water weed, and also on adjacent logs, were at least 50 carcasses of large white and smaller plumed egrets: nearly one third of the rookery, perhaps more: the birds having been shot off their nests containing young. What a holocaust! Plundered for their plumes. What a monument of human callousness! There were 50 birds ruthlessly destroyed, besides their young (about 200) left to die of starvation! This last fact was betokened by at least 70 carcasses of the nestlings, which had become so weak that their legs had refused to support them and they had fallen from the nests into the water below."
The snowy egret faced extinction by 1918, when it finally came under the protection of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which made plume hunting illegal.
"The species bounced back and expanded into new areas during the mid-20th century," according to the National Audubon Society. "Breeding Bird Surveys and Christmas Bird Counts show overall increases; however, since the late 20th century, snowy egret populations have experienced considerable flux, suggesting that the species is vulnerable to environmental threats such as the destruction of coastal wetlands, pollution and competition with other bird species."
In spite of the latest threats, the snowy egret has become an American symbol of successful preservation, even making an appearance on a 37-cent postage stamp in October 2003. Given its stature, I hope that it would be willing to accompany me if I am ever invited to escort a bird to a royal ball.
Jay W. Sharp is a Las Cruces author who is a regular contributor to DesertUSA, an Internet magazine, and who is the author of Texas Unexplained. For more on spotting water birds in the desert Southwest, see his article "Testing the Waters" in the July 2009 issue.