Great White Egret Mother With Chicks

            Southwest Florida
USA

Click On Image To Enlarge.
 
Wild great egret mother with two chicks nesting on the edge of alligator bay at the zoo where I volunteer on Mondays. The zoo is a place for all types of birds to roost during breeding season. They produce their young and then leave for other parts of Florida. The bay offers protection against raccoons which could easily reach the chicks, but the alligators keep the raccoons away. Some chicks are sacrificed if they fall into the water, but I have never seen that happen yet. The birds are at the zoo about three months a year. We also have anhingas, snowy egrets, white ibis, little blue herons, and tri-colored herons. 

Source Wikipedia –
The great egret (Ardea alba), also known as the common egret, large egret or (in the Old World) great white egret or great white heron is a large, widely distributed egret, with four subspecies found in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and southern Europe. Distributed across most of the tropical and warmer temperate regions of the world. It builds tree nests in colonies close to water.

Like all egrets, it is a member of the heron family, Ardeidae. Traditionally classified with the storks in the Ciconiiformes, the Ardeidae are closer relatives of pelicans and belong in the Pelecaniformes instead. The great egret—unlike the typical egrets—does not belong to the genus Egretta but together with the great herons is today placed in Ardea.

The great egret feeds in shallow water or drier habitats, feeding mainly on fish, frogs, small mammals, and occasionally small reptiles and insects, spearing them with its long, sharp bill most of the time by standing still and allowing the prey to come within its striking distance of its bill which it uses as a spear. It will often wait motionless for prey, or slowly stalk its victim.

Taken in: United States / Florida / Naples (show map)

Taken on: May 7, 2018

Tags:

Southwest Florida

Local Zoo

Wild Birds

Great Egret

Mother

Chicks

Ardea alba

Bird

Animal

Carnivore

Old World

Large Bird

Tropical

Warmer Temperate

Nest Close To Water

Ardeidae Family

Pelecaniformes Family

Feeds on Fish

Feeds On Insects

Frogs

Small Mammals

Small Reptiles

Spear With Bill

Standing Still

Waits Motionless

Slowly Stalk

Sue Roehl

Panasonic

Lumix DMC-GX8

100 - 400 mm Lens

Handheld

Cropped

Photographed On Other Side of Bay

coth5

NPC « less

Sets appears in: • Wild Birds At The Local Zoo

Groups appears in: • Nature Photography • Beauty of Nature more » • Animal Planet • The Nature Conservancy • Wild About Wildlife • Damn! I Wish I'd Taken That!!! (Invite Only) Post 1-Award2 . • Birding In The Wild • Fantastic Wildlife • NatureLovers • NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ANIMALS • National Geographic Wild Life • **Heart Awards** (P.1 Award 5) Open - Sweeper present • Colors Of The Heart! *Invited Images Only*! • Nature's Carousel - Closed! • Nature's Golden Carousel ~ Closed! • The Galaxy & Stars 1 (P1/C5 - No AI Images • *Feathers & Beaks* P1 - A3 • Our Wonderful and Fragile World - P1 - A4 • Wild Birds of North America • NATURE'S SPIRIT (by invitation) (post 1/award 1) • BAT'S LAIR ( P 1 X A 3 ) SWEEPER IN OPERATION • Worldwide Fauna « less

Stats: 5,316 views / 159 comments

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder