Elegant hunter

People, snails and seaweeds are among the few million kinds of living things on earth that share the miracle of successful adaptation with this little egret (Egretta garzetta). No matter how different we all look! How food is found, predators are dodged, and the next generation is produced, are all tied up in physical shapes, modes of functioning, and unique specific capabilities.

All the extant species on earth are endowed in some way, each in its own way, suited to a particular niche of sustainable existence somewhere on the planet. As long as we’re still here, we share an alertness to danger, energy for our food hunt, and the finding of mates in a myriad of ways, not planned beforehand but evolved as the generations succeed each other.

The extinct ones? Values of a critical variable have suddenly or slowly exceeded the functional range, and another species is gone! Lack of food, air or water, unmanageable temperatures, natural enemies, or some sickness tolled the bell for every lost species, somewhere in the earth’s history.

The little egret is in its comfort zone, simultaneously also close to danger, almost all the time. It possesses the classic heron hunting-feeding mechanism, the key body feature that allows it to capture its food: When it strikes, the head accelerates forward at astonishing speed. The sharp beak is its spear. The catching action is usually too fast for the prey, often a slippery one in the waves or tidal pool.

These birds don’t only live by the sea. They’re aquatic, present all over southern Africa near water, getting busy in shallow water, salt or fresh. They eat fish, frogs, lizards, crustaceans, insects and molluscs. Two to four chicks are hatched in about 26 days once a year from their pale blue-green eggs (Maclean, 1993; Wikipedia).