White Heron.

I watched this white heron feeding in the swamp marsh at North Lakes in Queensland and I admired its sleek body and graceful movements.

The Intermediate Egret is fully white in colour but the colour of their beak, lores, eyes and legs changes during the breeding cycle. This is when the intermediate egret sprouts long plumes and where the alternative name of ‘Plumed Egret,’ is derived.

The intermediate egrets are similar to Australia’s other all-white egrets although the Little Egret has a long, black bill and the Great Egret has an exceptionally long neck and a flatter shaped head. Cattle egrets are much shorter and have stouter bills.

Intermediate egrets occur in flocks occasionally which may contain hundreds of birds and they are found amongst dense aquatic vegetation in shallow, freshwater wetlands. Their habitats also include billabongs, swamps, and floodplains.

Their diet mainly consists of fish and frogs and they hunt by standing and waiting then stabbing their prey with their dagger sharp beaks. These egrets build their nests on shallow platforms using interwoven sticks and prefer them to on horizontal branches of trees that are standing in water.

The male and the female Intermediate egrets share incubation duties with the female laying three or four pale green eggs. Both parents become involved with feeding their nestlings after regurgitating food into the nests or directly into the beaks of their young.

THANK YOU FOR VIEWING. HAVE A GREAT DAY.