A totally white bird (lenght 50 cm) with black legs and
conspiciously yellow toes and a black bill. In the breeding
season long plumes, called aigrettes, grow from the heads of the
egrets. On the photo below you can see, not yet full grown,
aigrettes used in a show off. These feathers were a reason for
massive killings of these birds in the beginning of the 20th
century. The aigrettes were then used for the lady fashion of
these days in Europe and America and they were worth their
(small) weight in gold. Every year more then a million of these
birds were killed for their ornaments.
The snowy egrets eat mainly small fish and look for it at shallow
places along the coast, like Bigi Pan or on the mud flats outside
on sea. They sleep with other herons and the red ibises. With
these same birds big breeding colonies are formed, often in young
mangrove forests. A couple of thousand pairs breed every year in
Suriname. Counting them (and other herons, ibises, storks and
ducks) has often been done from a plane for Stinasu, the
foundation for the protection of nature in Suriname.
The first two pictures were made by Steven Wytema. The photo
below this text by Leo Olmtak, then one by Wytema again, all made
in Suriname. More pictures of
other waterbirds in Suriname can be found in the photo
galleries.
Each small square indicates the observation of at least one
(group) of these birds, the medium ones at least 4 observations
on different days and the largest ones 10 or more. The color of
each square indicates: blue for coastal area, yellow for savanna
and red for rainforest. Groups of hundreds are common (on
roosting places, for instance) and sometimes I saw aggregations
of up to 2000 egrets (Ribot, 1980 coppenamepunt).
The picture below was made by Arie Spaans in Suriname in the
breeding colony at Kentbank near Boskamp.
| Distribution in Suriname (explanation) | |
| Coastal area |  |
| Savanna |  |
| Forests |  |
| Mountain forests | |
| Sipalawini savanna |  |
Names in:
More pictures of herons in Suriname
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