By John De Boer
After I took several pictures of this Great Egret fishing in the Grand River, I noticed he had aquatic weeds wrapped around his neck. Then, with a few flaps of his majestic wings he landed on this shoal, where he tried to pull the weeds off with his beak.
To see these snowy white birds is a real treat as they were hunted nearly to extinction in the late nineteenth century. The Great Egret is the symbol of the National Audubon Society, which was incorporated in 1905 to protect these birds from plume hunters.
It would have been nice if I could have removed the stringy weeds from his neck, but he flew away. Maybe he thought I was going to pluck some of his plumes.
Grand River Explorations 