Wednesday March 29th - Cattle Egret

 

Wednesday March 29th – Cattle Egret

          Wednesday morning Mike and I decided to take a quick trip out to Howard’s Marsh and were able to find several new FOY birds. These included a flock of Dunlin, a couple of Pectoral Sandpipers and a single Caspian Tern mixed in with a flock of gulls. 

          We were a little short on time, but decided to take a run through Metzger’s Marsh.  We hadn’t seen anything unusual and were leaving when a woman coming the other way rolled down her window and asked if we had seen anything special.  We said no and she said, “There’s a Cattle Egret right over there with the gulls”.  I thought to myself – yeah, right!  I assumed that she had misidentified a Great Egret, but I was wrong.  There really was a little Cattle Egret in breeding plumage right there.  This is a pretty rare bird in Ohio especially this early in the Spring.  Mike reported the bird, and it made the Ohio Rare Bird Alert.  This was definitely the highlight of our morning.  

                                             Cattle Egret

                                      Caspian Tern

                                       Dunlin



 

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