The Little Egret that wasn't there 4/7/07

Photos: Great Horned Owl -- Little Creek WMA. Black-crowned Night-Heron -- Bombay Hook NWR. Common Loon eating a crab -- Indian River Inlet. Red-throated Loon -- Indian River Inlet.


So while perusing the rare bird alerts on the 6th I noticed that a Little Egret had been spotted at Bombay Hook NWR outside Dover, Delaware. Little Egrets are super rare in North America. They are an Old World Heron and any sighting on the East Coast is real exciting. I called Bill Hubick and Hans Holbrook and we set up a time to meet and chase the bird early the next morning.
I woke early Saturday morning to almost an inch of snow and it was still coming down. An hour later Bill, Hans, and myself were rolling down the back roads of Delmarva watching the snow covered fields zoom by while wondering if this was really April. Upon reaching Bombay Hook we drove straight to Bear Swamp where the Little Egret had been seen the day before. There were egrets present but we could not pick out anything other than Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets both of which are common warm weather birds on Delmarva. We decided to criuse the wildlife loop of the refuge slowly just to make sure we had not missed the bird. Along this slow cruise I was able to score some new photos of fairly common species like Red-winged Blackbird, Tree Swallow, and Black-crowned Night-Heron. After three hours spent on the refuge we decided that we had looked long enough for the Little Egret and decided to head south. Port Mahon was strangely slow with only a Snowy Egret photographed. We then headed to Little Creek where we had our star bird of the day. While driving back out to the main road, Bill and Hans simultaneously yelled stop. After backing up a couple feet, along side the road sitting on a small limb was a newly fledged Great Horned Owl. It puffed out its feathers and tried to look as mean as possible. It then started bill clacking and soon an adult Owl flew in and landed in the trees behind the young bird. It was spectacular watching the young owl's behavior. Being satisfied with our photos we left the owl and headed towards the ocean inlets. The wind was howling on the coast and it was really cold even though the sun had come out and the morning snow had long ago disapeared. Gannets were diving off shore and both species of loons were active inside the inlets along with Bonaparte's Gulls, Scoters, and Red-breasted Mergansers. Common Loons were almost entirely in breeding plumage while the Red-throateds were still in transition. Eventhough we did not see the Little Egret it was still an awesome day on Delmarva.