Little Egret Egretta garzetta Scientific name definitions

The Little Egret is a sleek, graceful heron that occurs across much of Eurasia, Africa, and Australia. The widespread nominate subspecies, E. g. garzetta, and the Australasian subspecies, E. g. nigripes, have only a white morph (except for a tiny number of garzetta). The coastal east-African, E. g. dimorpha, is appropriately dimorphic, with a dark and white morph. During the breeding season, the Little Egret is quite showy, if often monochromatic, due to two long lanceolate plumes from the nape, as well as shorter denser lanceolate plumes from the lower neck, and fluffy filamentous plumes from the scapulars.

During the late nineteenth century, these plumes were more valuable than gold. When smuggled into Europe they fetched £15 an ounce (about £875 at 2000 prices), with each individual producing about 1 gram of plumes (1 Robinson, R.A. (2005). Little Egret Egretta garzetta in BirdFacts: profiles of birds occurring in Britain & Ireland. British Trust for Ornithology. Thetford, United Kingdom. Close ). Fortunately, its plumes are no longer a commodity, and Little Egret is increasingly common through much of its range, with an estimated global population (circa year 2000) of 660,000 to 3,150,000 birds (2 Wetlands International (2021). Waterbird Population Estimates. Retrieved from wpe.wetlands.org on Monday 22 Mar 2021 Close ).

The Little Egret can be found in a wide variety of wetlands, including the shallow margins of lakes and rivers, saltwater and freshwater marshes, flooded meadows, rice fields, mudflats, mangrove swamps, sandy beaches, and rocky shoreline (3 Hancock, J., and J. Kushlan (1984). The Herons Handbook. Harper and Row Publishers, New York, NY, USA. Close , 4 Kushlan, J. A., and J. A. Hancock (2005). The Herons. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA. Close ). It takes a wide range of prey items, including small fish, amphibians, crustaceans, insects, small birds, small mammals, and other similarly sized prey. It hunts using a variety of strategies; from standing absolutely still with head cocked and ready to strike, to prancing about with wings open and bill pointed downwards (5 Hancock, J. (1999). Herons and Egrets of the World: A photographic journey. Academic Press, London, United Kingdom. Close ). Habitat loss resulting from the destruction of natural wetlands has been somewhat countered by the Little Egret's adaptability, as it seems equally able to utilize anthropogenic habitats like rice fields and fish ponds.

The Little Egret undergoes extensive post-breeding dispersal between July and September, and is also a short- to medium-distance partial migrant. The northernmost breeding populations move south from late August into November and back north during March and April (6 Snow, D. W., and C. M. Perrins (1998b). The Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume 2: Passerines. Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. Close , 4 Kushlan, J. A., and J. A. Hancock (2005). The Herons. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA. Close ). The species also has a propensity to wander, with records from as far afield as Buldir Island in Alaska's Aleutian Islands (7 Tobish, T. (2000). Alaska. North American Birds 54:315-318. Close ), the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago 940 kilometers northeast of Brazil (8 Bencke, G. A., P. Ott, I. Moreno, M. Tavares, and G. Caon (2005). Old World birds new to the Brazilian territory recorded in the Archipelago of São Pedro and São Paulo, equatorial Atlantic Ocean. Ararajuba. 13(1):126–129. Close , 9 Santana, W. and A. Pontes Pinheiro (2010). On the occurrence of the Eurasian Kestrel Falco tinnunculus Linnaeus, 1758 and Little Egret Egretta garzetta (Linnaeus, 1766) in the Archipelago of São Pedro e São Paulo, Brazil. Revista Brasileira Ornitologia 18(2):118–120. Close ), and Aruba in the central Caribbean (10 Mlodinow, S. G. (2006). Five new species of birds for Aruba, with notes on other significant sightings. Journal of Caribbean Ornithology 19:31-35. Close , 11 Prins, T. G., J. H. Reuter, A. O. Debrot, J. Wattel, and V. Nijman (2009). Checklist of the birds of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire, South Caribbean. Ardea 97(2):137–268. Close ). Its history in the Western Hemisphere is particularly notable: it was first recorded there in 1954 in Barbados (12 Bond, J. (1966). Eleventh Supplement to the Check-list of Birds of the West Indies. Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, USA. Close ) and Newfoundland (13 Godfrey, W. E. (1956). The Little Egret, a new bird for North America. Auk 73:457. Close ) and during the ensuing 25 years, three more were found in the Western Hemisphere, all of which had been banded in western Spain the previous summer: Trinidad in 1957, Martinique in 1962, and Suriname in 1969 (14 Downs, W. G. (1959). Little Egret banded in Spain taken in Trinidad. Auk 76:241–242. Close , 15 Haverschmidt, F. (1983). First record of the Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) in Suriname. Wilson Bulletin 95:315. Close , 16 Bond, J. (1985). Birds of the West Indies. Fifth edition. Collins & Houghton Mifflin, New York, NY, USA. Close ). Then, none were detected during the 1970s, but in the 1980s, 14 were found from eastern Canada to Trinidad (17 Mlodinow, S. G., W. E. Davis, Jr., and J. I. Dies (2004). Possible Anywhere: The Little Egret, with notes on Western Reef-Heron. Birding 36:52-62. Close ). Records accrued at an increasing rate through the 1990s, especially on Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago (17 Mlodinow, S. G., W. E. Davis, Jr., and J. I. Dies (2004). Possible Anywhere: The Little Egret, with notes on Western Reef-Heron. Birding 36:52-62. Close ), and in 1994, the Little Egret was recorded nesting on Barbados (18 Massiah, E. (1996). Identification of Snowy Egret and Little Egret. Birding World 9(11):434–444. Close ) with 15 to 25 pairs nesting annually there from 1997 through 2006 (19 Buckley, P. A., E. B. Massiah, M. B. Hutt, F. G. Buckley, and H. F. Hutt (2009). The Birds of Barbados: An Annotated Checklist. B.O.U. Checklist 24. British Ornithologists’ Union & British Ornithologists’ Club, Peterborough, UK. Close ) and likely through 2020 (E. Massiah, personal communication). Additionally, three pairs were found nesting on Antigua in the northern Lesser Antilles in March 2008 (20 Kushlan, J.A. and J. W. Prosper (2009). Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) nesting on Antigua: a second nesting site in the Western Hemisphere. Journal of Caribbean Ornithology 22(2):108–111. Close ).

Despite its abundance, charisma, and tendency to roam, the Little Egret is, perhaps, best known for taxonomic controversy. There are five closely related Old World taxa that have been combined in a variety of ways by various authors over the last hundred years: Egretta garzetta (throughout much of Europe, southern Asia, and Africa); Egretta gularis (along the coastline of much of western Africa); Egretta schistacea (from the Middle East and eastern Africa east to portions of the eastern Indian coast); Egretta dimorpha (Madagascar, the Seychelles, and eastern Africa from Mozambique to Kenya); and Egretta nigripes (from Indonesia and the Philippines south to Australia and New Zealand). In the 1930s, these five taxa were placed into three species, the Little Egret (garzetta, dimorpha, and nigripes), the Western Reef-Heron (gularis), and the Eastern Reef-Heron (schistacea) (21 Chapin, J. P. (1932). The birds of the Belgian Congo. Part 1. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 65:1–756. Close , 22 Grant, C. H. B., and C. W. Mackworth-Praed (1938). A further note on the Relationship, Status and Distribution of Egretta garzetta, E. gularis, E. schistacea and E. dimorpha. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists Club 59:24-26. Close ). Subsequently, they were combined in a number of ways that resulted in one species (23 White, C. M. N. (1965) A revised check list of African non-passerine birds. Government Printer, Lusaka, Zambia. Close , 3 Hancock, J., and J. Kushlan (1984). The Herons Handbook. Harper and Row Publishers, New York, NY, USA. Close , 24 del Hoyo, J., A. Elliott, and J. Sargatal, Editors (1992). Handbook of the Birds of the World, Volume 1: Ostrich to Ducks. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona, Spain. Close , 25 Dowsett, R. J., and F. Dowsett-Lemaire (1993). Comments on the taxonomy of some Afrotropical bird species. Tauraco Research Report 5: 323–389. Close ) or in two or three species (26 Cramp, S., and K. E. L. Simmons, Editors (1977). The Birds of the Western Palearctic. Volume 1. Ostrich to Ducks. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Close , 27 Hancock, J., and H. Elliot (1978). The Herons of the World. Harper and Row, New York, NY, USA. Close , 28 Turner, D. A. (2010). The Egretta garzetta complex in East Africa: a case for one, two or three species. Scopus 30:59–63. Close ). Though controversy certainly still exists, the prevailing current taxonomy combines these five into two species; the Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) (consisting of garzetta, dimorpha, and nigripes), and the Western Reef-Heron (Egretta gularis) (consisting of gularis and schistacea) (29 Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood (2019). The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World: v2019. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. Close ).