Spearing a Light Lunch
The Great Egret — as you can see in earlier posts on this blog — can spear and devour both mammals and fish bigger than its beak. But some days it has to be content with a meal of appetizers, hoping that quantity will make up for quality. That was the case for this bird at low tide around noon. It stalked in the shallows a few yards from shore and plunged its head whiplike into the water. More often than not, it came up with a little wiggling something that it unceremoniously downed. Only once, when its prey was maybe two inches long, did the bird begin — but not follow through — on the dipping ritual that it uses with larger prey (see the links above).
