I don’t remember this well enough to be 100% on which egret I saw, but it was a cool encounter. The kind of moment that makes you wish memory was a stronger thing. It was in San Francisco which on cursory googling narrows it down to snowy or great egret, and it was a small bird. Can’t remember the beak or leg color, which would be a better tell.
It was a blustery overcast day with random shafts of sun, and who knows why but we were the only people in the entire San Francisco zoo. Maybe my brother could explain that; he was a regular at that time. We walked the artificially twisty paths, in and out of areas with short trees. We saw an interspecies lemur cuddle pile which was very cute, but the best thing was that the free birds – the ones that weren’t even part of an exhibit – were cool characters that I do not get to see in WA state. Or can only see in glimpses at a distance.
There was a belted kingfisher just sitting on a branch, close enough to get a good look. I haven’t been within fifty feet of one in the PNW. Cooler still, there was a perfect and beautiful little white bird wading in a fountain, looking to my eyes like a pet-sized origami crane. It had been eating frogs or koi, I don’t know, and didn’t appreciate our company. Lucky us, that meant we could watch it fly away, see the whole beautiful mechanics of its body in motion.
Man I wish I could remember that shit better. Human frailty sucks.
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I imagine that you wouldn’t confuse great and snowy egrets, as great egret is a much bigger bird, but a non-breeding western cattle egret could be a possibility. (I assume that you would have noticed that orange-pink tinting of the breeding plumage of cattle egret.)
Cattle egrets have undergone large range extensions over the past century, apparently under their own steam, though they haven’t made it to Britain in any number yet. Range extensions in little and great egrets are less dramatic, but both have colonised Britain during my lifetime, and I now see them once in a while.
Further reading tells me that little egret was present in Britain during the medieval period but was extirpated by the combination of over-hunting and climate deterioration (the Little Ice Age).
snowy feels right for the vibe of my memory, but it’s just a vibe because shit went mad fuzzy on me. it’s a memory of a memory already.