Great Egret

Now that winter is settling in, our egrets are back for the winter.  They don't nest here, but alway come back for the easy pickings of little frogs and big night-crawlers.  This was was sketched while it rested on a post at our local duck pond.

Watching Egrets

Some of my best opportunities for sketching in nature come when my husband is busy photographing and I sketch.  We sit quietly in the car, both glued to our subject.  Great egrets winter in the valley where I live.  This winter we've seen up to 23 in a wet swale only about four miles from our home.

These were sketched on Jan 15.  Today, we returned to the same spot for our fourth visit.  We still had 12 egrets .... but they were farther off on a higher part of the pasture.  I confess, my husband and I both fell asleep waiting for the marvelous birds to come closer.  I don't get much sketching done with my eyelids closed!.... but it felt delicious.  Just image the milky sun keeping the car warm, the window cracked open just far enough to hear far off crows, occasional croaks from the egrets, and robins nearby.

By the time the egrets finally came near, the clouds had also come in to .... so no photographing  or sketching today.

For those of you who are interested, these were lightly penciled first, then inked, erased -- very quick.  Finally I add the watercolor, some in the car and some at home since I ran out of time.

Great Egret

I sketched this last week at Wildlife Safari, the wild animal park where we volunteer.  I wanted to capture how egrets sparkle in the sunshine.  Such elegant birds!

September 2011: Great Egret at Lunch

September 2011: Great Egret, a photo by apple-pine on Flickr.

I had a wonderful lunch time - watching great egret hunt for his lunch :) Very patiently, very slowly, then one quick dab and gulping the catch... another wait...

A rather large cormorant popped up a few times but quickly disappeared so all I got of him was a quick note :) 

Here is my phone shot in the process.

Great egret ~ Elizabeth Smith

It surprises me how a short time out in nature with my sketchbook can eliminate a week’s worth of stress! Last Sunday afternoon was warm with a cool-ish breeze, and filled with a lovely golden light.

I sat to the side of the path that winds around the north lake at Freedom Park, reveling in the abundance of butterflies nectaring on cassia and Spanish needles. As I started to sketch the grasses and water, a great egret walked into view.

I knew this was a great egret and not the white version (morph) of the great blue heron because of its black legs. Great blue heron legs are yellow, though sometimes grayish-yellow. Great egret legs are definitely black.

For the longest time I had no memory device to remember this trivia, until I associated *egret = ebony* to describe the ebony-like leg color. Now I just have to remember that it doesn’t apply to every egret! We have snowy egrets (black legs, yellow feet), and cattle egrets (yellow legs and feet) here in Southwest Florida, but they’re smaller birds with slightly different head and neck shapes.

Pond apple trunk

 This lake is part of a constructed wetland designed to relieve flooding during our rainy season (approximately June through September) and to purify water before it enters Gordon River and Naples Bay. The park also incorporates existing wetlands to the east, which has old stands of cypress and laurel oak, and some lovely old red mangroves and pond apples.

I sketched these directly with a Sakura Micron Pigma pen, and then added watercolor pencil to the lake sketch, washing over it with clear water from my Niji waterbrush. If you’d like to read more about great egrets, visit the links below.
National Geographic
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Audubon

~Elizabeth Smith
Naples, Florida, USA