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Great Egret
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(Ardea alba)
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Family: Herons and Egrets
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Top Products From BirdStoppers To Repel Egrets:
GooseBuster: Canada Goose Repeller featuring actual alert and alarm calls recorded in the wild.
Bird Stop: Biodegradable Food-Grade Spray Repellent for Grass.
GatorGuard: Floating alligator head replica scares geese, ducks, fish eating birds.
Prowler Owl: Always-moving predator chases away birds and small animals.
Description:
The Great Egret is a large member of the heron family, with long legs, white plumage, and a slender body. Adults have black legs and feet. During the breeding season, the normally yellow bill may appear orange and long feather plumes extend from the back to beyond the tail. Immature egrets and non-breeding adults have no plumes and the color of their bills and legs is duller. The wings of the Great Egret are proportionately longer and broader than most other white herons. In flight, the Great Egret holds its neck in a more open S-shape than do other white herons.
Damage:
Waterfowl cause significant losses to agricultural and aqua cultural crops, damage golf courses, cemeteries, lawns, and gardens, and contaminate reservoirs. Their activities can cause real economic hardship, aggravate nuisance situations, or create human health hazards. Besides consuming fish, egrets can injure fish, disrupt their feeding activity, disturb broodstock, and contribute to the spread of diseases and parasites in aquaculture ponds and raceways. Egret feces can degrade water quality and through bacterial activity, lead to reduced oxygen levels. It can result in significant expenditure of time and funds in establishing bird management programs and training personnel.
How To Control Infestations:
Egrets can be difficult to remove. Once established, immediate corrective landscaping and behavioral modification is imperative: Remove cover shrubbery; use herbicides to eliminate aquatic vegetation; and reduce fertilizer, especially around pond areas, to make grass less nutritionally attractive. Several visual scare products like the GatorGuard and Prowler Owl combined with Bird Stop taste aversion should be employed as soon as the birds enter the area, varying in location and type. For more established flocks, audio scare devices like our top selling GooseBuster which projects true geese distress calls through several speaker locations in a random pattern to scare them away. All systems require constant re-enforcement and should be relocated frequently, especially the GatorGuard replica to remain a realistic threat to the birds.
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Call:
Very deep, low, gravelly kroow.
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FAST FACTS
Height/Weight:
32" to 72"; 32 - 40 oz.
Life Span:
15 years wild; 22 in captivity
Food:
Frogs, snakes, crayfish, fish, mice, crickets, aquatic insects, grasshoppers, and many other insects
Habitat:
Streams, lakes, ponds, mud flats, saltwater and freshwater marshes are inhabited by this beautiful bird. Wooded swamps and wetlands are the preferred location for great egrets and other heron species.
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