Up until my last visit to Stocker’s Lake I had seen only a few egrets and taken some pretty average photos of them, but on this visit down by the lakeside one stood in the sunshine of the late afternoon. Despite having to shoot through the foliage I managed to get some better shots of it.
Its habit of standing on one leg, pulling its right leg up and tucking it into its side and under its white plumage did mean it sometimes looked a bit like an elongated snowy lollipop.
Egrets are in fact a type of heron, the more elegant cousins of the grey herons I wrote about last week.
They are smaller than grey herons growing to only 55-65 cm in height, with a wingspan of 88-106 cm and weighing in at 350-550g. I must admit I still find the weights of these relatively tall birds a bit mind-blowing. Keeping to the white theme that means they weigh the same as a small bag of flour.
As I’ve said this was one of the few occasions that I have visited the lake in the afternoon and with it being particularly hot I wasn’t surprised that there were fewer birds than normal about.
That didn’t mean that there weren’t other things to admire, and the beautiful purple and indigo flowers provided a beautiful accent colour to the abundant greenery.
A month or so ago I was struck by the bright yellow irises but those are now a memory, and a variety of new flowers are taking centre stage.
If it wasn’t a day for birds, it was a day for flowers and insects and especially butterflies. I was surprised at how often these little insects cast a shadow large enough to catch my eye and, while few would land for long enough for me to photograph them, a some dutifully obliged.
And the observant among you will have noticed the intertwining of images across the different themes of egrets (and herons), purple and insects with insects on purple flowers, both a heron and the egret amongst more flowers. I have also included what at first appear to be two very similar images of the egret, but look closely and you’ll see that in one it is standing on two legs and in the other it is standing on one.
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