On a Saturday morning, I was up at the north beach marsh at Fort Desoto when I saw a scuttle going on across the marsh. Two reddish egrets were fighting over something. Maybe feeding space? The one on the right is a white morph version of the reddish egret. While they are common in the Caribbean, there are only a few that hang around this beach and I don’t see them very often.

The reddish egret chased the white morph away.

He landed right in front of me.

He seemed to be trying to recover from the scuttle.

Now he’s just trying to be cool. Giving me a high five (really scratching an itch).

He pranced around in front of me.

“Get a good picture lady.”

He wandered closer to the reeds and started dancing around looking for food but he never raised his wings like they usually do. They raise their wings to shade the water so they can see the fish better. I wonder if he’s a juvenile. One of the bird stewards had told me there was a breeding pair there, a reddish egret and white morph. They have had babies in the past.

He seemed a little lost and wasn’t quite sure what to do.

After a while it was time to leave and I still hadn’t seen him catch a fish. Maybe he just wasn’t hungry.

It was a quiet morning but at least I got to watch him walking around. He came pretty close to me and I kept backing up to fit him in my 300mm lens. There were other shorebirds around but nothing too exciting. At least the sun was out. I feel like I hadn’t seen it much in the past month. If it wasn’t for that slight breeze coming off the water I probably would have passed out from heat stroke.