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Tom Grey | all galleries >> North American Birds by Type >> Herons and Egrets >> Snowy Egrets > Snowy Egrets, bill grabbing
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01-AUG-2006 Tom Grey

Snowy Egrets, bill grabbing

Palo Alto Baylands

Here's a large fully-fledged "brancher" -- a juvenile out of the nest, but still spending time in the nest tree -- aggressively grabbing the bill of feeding parent. This is behavior that stimulates the adult to regurgitate the food item -- here what looks to be a pretty large fish -- for the young bird to eat. It looked in this case that the parent was requiring the young bird to do a lot of work for the food. Maybe coming to the end of the feeding period -- "good to go"?

Canon EOS 20D ,Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM
1/2500s f/5.6 at 400.0mm iso200 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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marko gregoric25-Nov-2008 17:10
Fantastic shot!!! V.
vholmes09-Oct-2007 05:01
WOW!