The white wading birds trip a lot of people up, and fair enough, there are several of them and they all stand around in the same shallow water. Here's the simple version I use in the field. Once these click, the rest of the wetland cast gets a lot easier to read.
Great egret
The tall one. Great egrets are big, all white, with a yellow bill and black legs and black feet. Long S curve of a neck. If you see a large white bird standing patiently in the shallows and looking elegant about it, that's usually a great egret. This is the bird in the green water on the homepage galleries.
Snowy egret
The smaller, busier one. Snowy egrets are noticeably smaller than great egrets, with a black bill and, the giveaway, bright yellow feet on black legs. People call them the golden slippers. Snowies also tend to be more active feeders, shuffling and dashing around instead of standing still.
The quick trick
Look at the bill and the feet together:
- Yellow bill, black feet, and tall = great egret.
- Black bill, yellow feet, and smaller = snowy egret.
That one pairing sorts out most of the confusion.
The other white birds
A few more you'll meet in the same spots:
- White ibis: white body, black wingtips, and an unmistakable long, down curved pink bill. If the bill curves down, it's an ibis, not an egret.
- Wood stork: big and white with black flight feathers and a bald, dark, leathery head. Not pretty up close, but a great subject. There are a few in the galleries.
- Cattle egret: small and stocky, often away from water in grassy fields, and in spring it picks up buff colored patches for breeding.
Egret or heron?
People mix these up too. As a rough rule, the all white birds here are egrets, and the larger, grayer, more colorful ones are herons, like the great blue heron. They're closely related, so don't lose sleep over the label. Get the photo first and sort the name out later.
Want to go see them? Here's where to find them and when they look their best. And if you spot a pink one, that's a roseate spoonbill, a different post entirely.
