The Story
On August 30, 2016, I photographed this Great Egret (Ardea alba) at Harveston Lake Park in Temecula, California. The great egret can stand up to about a meter tall, with a wingspan of up to 170 centimeters. It lives across most of the tropical and warmer temperate regions of the world and nests in trees, in colonies close to water. Around the end of the 19th century great egrets were killed in large numbers for the plumes used on hats, and conservation measures have since let their numbers recover.
I used a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM for this one, at 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 800. IUCN lists the Great Egret as Least Concern with a stable population, and the City of Temecula asks visitors not to feed the ducks people food, which harms the birds and the lake’s water quality.
©2017 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Great Egret (Ardea alba) belongs to the family Ardeidae (Herons, Egrets, and Bitterns) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2025), with the population trend listed as stable. Source: IUCN Red List