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As I was shooting this bird from a distance (these are heavy crops) I kept thinking: “What I’m shooting?” At first I thought it was a Roseate Spoonbill, but I soon realized it was too small to be a Roseate. Only when I looked closer on my camera display I realized it was a Cattle Egret that somehow got dirty with some reddish clay
Later I remembered I had seen another one similar a couple of years before, so I decided to do some research and found that a similar colored Cattle Egret was photographed perched at the Gator Farm in Saint Augustine Florida, 27 April 2012. This one seems to have some problems with its right leg.
For those that are interested this is what was reported by David Sibley on the net:
To understand this bird’s coloration, it’s important to understand the unusual source of the buff color in Cattle Egrets. Evidence suggests that the buff color of Cattle Egrets is essentially a stain, coming from pigmented oil from specialized powder-down feathers. When a Cattle Egret molts in late summer the new feathers are all-white, and they slowly turn buff in winter and spring without molting. I will speculate that this bird is over-producing the oils from powder-down, and coloring the whole plumage. The darker color on the wing coverts could be the result of the pigmented oil interacting with differently-textured feathers there. Obviously there is a lot more to learn about Cattle Egrets and the details of their coloration. If this individual can be re-found and photographed at different seasons or in subsequent years that might offer some clues, and looking for similar anomalies in other Cattle Egrets could add important clues.
BTW an illustration of this bird can be found at the bottom of page 64 of the Sibley Guide.
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