Snowy in Spring

(Snowy Egret)

It’s hard not to be mesmerized by Snowy Egrets. They are always striking additions to still waters, especially in the spring, when their plumage is at its showiest—long, silken, flowing on a breeze. If you are lucky and get a close look at one at the beginning of breeding season, you may see the featherless skin at the base of the bill turn from its normal yellow to a deep red.

In January of 2018, I was haunting edges of the tidal basin at the Bolsa Chica preserve in Orange County, CA. There was an unusually large gathering of Snowy Egrets that day hanging around like kids in a school yard. You’ll also spot one Great Egret in this snap shot, but he was just a bystander. That gang of Snowies, however, was doing something I’d never seen before—an amazing show of interspecies cooperation.

The other actors in the drama were Doubled-Crested Cormorants. They were swimming in a formation that mirrored the line of egrets. Between their lines must have been a large school of minnows. I first noticed that the Snowies would become super excited, wave their wings and rush and splash into the water toward the line of Cormorants. The school of minnow would flee, jumping from the water in their panic—right into the waiting beaks of the cormorants. Their feeding would continue until the ball of minnows dissipated as individuals headed into deeper water. Then the cormorants would dive and surface repeatedly until they had, perhaps, consolidated the minnow school again. By some imperceptible signal, the cormorants would turn together and herd the minnows back toward the shallows and waiting egrets. I watched as the two “teams” repeated their parts until the minnows were either gone or the birds were entirely sated,