Great Egret ID Confirm?

This bird stood 20 feet away from me today in Northeast PA--I've never seen one up here, and it put on a show until I got tired of snapping pictures.

I'm a little thrown by the blueish beak, the eye color, and the legs and orange-ish feet. Breeding colors?? Young egret??

Thanks for any help, i'll post two for now.

and another, really hot light, but I have a hundred or so photos to go thru. thanks!

Snowy Egret!

I heard you yell that Nate!! I thought the snowy's plumage was a lot more "fluffy". Sorry!!!

No worries Bill, I didn't think I was yelling I was just trying to be enthusiastic, I was excited that you got a Snowy Egret. The yellow feet are diagnostic of a Snowy.

Agree with Nate's assessment. Also, Great Egrets are, well, Great in size. Similar to a Great Blue Heron. As for them being "puffy" this applies to all egrets and herons when they are showing off their breeding plumage

I think a Snowy Egret is a moderately unusual bird in northeastern PA. I urge you to report it to your local Audubon Society office, or post it on a rare bird alert.

thanks folks, I've seen snowy and Great up close... thought this looked small for a Great, but not like a snowy. Sarcasm and kidding aside, I appreciate your help all, that's why I asked.

Jim, I've never ever seen or heard of one up this far. Thanks for the info!

Great Egrets will also have a yellow bill rather than the Snowy's black bill...

Generally speaking, Great Egret = yellow beak black feet while a Snowy Egret = black beak yellow feet! We have thousands of both in the Golden Isles of Georgia. With the fantastic numbers of both birds we have here, I don't recall ever seeing a baby or teenage age of either bird except in one place. Seems like whenever you see a Great Egret, he is usually already great!!! That really interests me!

And then there is the Cattle Egret with a yellow beak and "dark" feet (not black) with maybe tannish legs.

All are actually part of the heron family!

Also, for the life of me, I am going senile! I thought egret was spelled egrit! Dang, I am getting too old! Gotta go fix this in my website and in all my images on disk........ouch!!!

Troup Nightingale

well that's part of my confusion I think, this bill and the legs in fact, look blueish to me. Whether from the bright sun, or what. And the eyes look a bit different also. Anyway, appreciate the education all!!

Dang Troup, that's got to hurt to change all that!! But I once saw on an Egret's website he had "human", spelled "humin".

BTW, wrote to the Audubon Society twice, nothing yet from them. Any way this could ever possibly be an albino heron of some sort?? The bill and legs really looked blue, and the feet a bright color, like orange-ish. The eyes... Just tossing it out there, I trust you guys/gals implicity on IDs.

Hard to tell from the photos, but it might be a Little Egret, Egretta garzetta. The below site defines some of the differentiators between Snowy and Little Egrets, most notably size and the eyes.

http://www.oceanwanderers.com/LTEGRT.html

Hard to tell from the photos, but it might be a Little Egret, Egretta garzetta. The below site defines some of the differentiators between Snowy and Little Egrets, most notably size and the eyes.

http://www.oceanwanderers.com/LTEGRT.html