Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Pelecaniformes > Ardeidae > Ardea > Ardea alba

Ardea alba (Great Egret)

Synonyms: Ardea alba checklist; Casmerodius albus; Casmerodius albus albus; Egretta alba

Infraspecies

Ardea alba alba (Eurasian great egret)
Ardea alba egretta (American great egret)
Ardea alba melanorhynchos (Great white egret)
Egretta alba rnelanorhyncha

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
7
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
31
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 15.1374
EDGE Score: 2.78114
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Clutch Size [9]  4
Clutches / Year [7]  2
Fledging [6]  41 days
Incubation [7]  23 days
Mating System [4]  Monogamy
Maximum Longevity [7]  23 years
Snout to Vent Length [6]  37 inches (94 cm)
Speed [10]  22.817 MPH (10.2 m/s)
Water Biome [1]  Lakes and Ponds, Rivers and Streams, Coastal, Brackish Water
Wing Span [10]  4.723 feet (1.44 m)
Adult Weight [2]  2.194 lbs (995 g)
Birth Weight [4]  61 grams
Female Weight [8]  1.79 lbs (812 g)
Male Weight [8]  2.061 lbs (935 g)
Weight Dimorphism [8]  15.1 %
Breeding Habitat [3]  Wetlands
Wintering Geography [3]  Widespread
Wintering Habitat [3]  Wetlands, Coastal saltmarshes, Agricultural
Diet [5]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Carnivore (Vertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Ectothermic [5]  30 %
Diet - Endothermic [5]  10 %
Diet - Fish [5]  20 %
Diet - Invertibrates [5]  40 %
Forages - Ground [5]  50 %
Forages - Water Surface [5]  50 %
Female Maturity [7]  2 years
Male Maturity [7]  2 years

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

+ Click for partial list (100)Full list (932)

Ecosystems

Important Bird Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Habitat Vegetation Classification

Prey / Diet

Fundulus parvipinnis (California killifish)[11]
Leiostomus xanthurus (Spot croaker)[12]
Ommatotriton vittatus (Caucasian Banded Newt)[12]
Strongylura marina (Atlantic needlefish)[13]
Thomomys bottae (Botta's pocket gopher)[12]

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Alligator mississippiensis (Alligator, Gator, American alligator, Florida alligator, Mississippi alligator, Louisiana alligator.)[12]
Haliaeetus leucocephalus (Bald Eagle)[12]
Procyon lotor (Raccoon)[12]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Audio

Play / PauseVolume
Provided by Songs and calls of some New York State birds. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. Author: Tony Phillips

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 2Storchová, Lenka; Hořák, David (2018), Data from: Life-history characteristics of European birds, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n6k3n
♦ 3Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2017. Accessed on January 2018.
♦ 4Terje Lislevand, Jordi Figuerola, and Tamás Székely. 2007. Avian body sizes in relation to fecundity, mating system, display behavior, and resource sharing. Ecology 88:1605
♦ 5Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 6Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 7de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 8Hartman FA 1961. Locomotor mechanisms of birds. Smithson Misc Collect 143:1–91
♦ 9Jetz W, Sekercioglu CH, Böhning-Gaese K (2008) The Worldwide Variation in Avian Clutch Size across Species and Space PLoS Biol 6(12): e303. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060303
♦ 10Alerstam T, Rosén M, Bäckman J, Ericson PGP, Hellgren O (2007) Flight Speeds among Bird Species: Allometric and Phylogenetic Effects. PLoS Biol 5(8): e197. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050197
♦ 11Lafferty, K. D., R. F. Hechinger, J. C. Shaw, K. L. Whitney and A. M. Kuris (in press) Food webs and parasites in a salt marsh ecosystem. In Disease ecology: community structure and pathogen dynamics (eds S. Collinge and C. Ray). Oxford University Press, Oxford.
♦ 12Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 13Cirtwill, Alyssa R.; Eklöf, Anna (2018), Data from: Feeding environment and other traits shape species' roles in marine food webs, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1mv20r6
♦ 14Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Audio software provided by SoundManager 2
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0