The Snowy Egret Fishes With Its Yellow Feet in Golden Gate Park
A snowy egret fishes the shallows of Golden Gate Park. This year birders recorded one at Blue Heron Lake — the lake most people still call Stow Lake — on July 30, and another at North Lake on September 12. Golden Gate Park--Blue Heron Lake & Strawberry Hill | eBird hotspot Golden Gate Park--North Lake | eBird
The bird is easy to know: about two feet tall, entirely white, with a long black bill, black legs, and bright yellow feet. The yellow feet are what separate it from the great egret, which is also white but has a yellow bill. Snowy Egret | Audubon Field Guide Great Egret | Audubon Field Guide
Those feet are also hunting tools. A snowy egret paddles and probes with them in the mud, stirring the bottom to startle fish and crabs into moving before it stabs with its bill. Snowy Egret Life History | Cornell Lab of Ornithology
The species almost disappeared for fashion. Its long breeding plumes — the aigrettes that grow on its head and neck — were sold to decorate women's hats, and the outcry over the slaughter brought the National Audubon Society into being. Snowy egret | Wikipedia Snowy Egrets and Herons | National Park Service, Alcatraz Island
The comeback nests inside the city. Snowy egrets colonized Alcatraz Island, where the first birds arrived in 1997 and the colony reached 79 pairs by 2007. Snowy Egrets and Herons | National Park Service, Alcatraz Island
This weekend, walk the shore of Blue Heron Lake or the smaller North Lake at the park's northwest corner, early in the morning. Find a small white heron standing still in the quiet shallows, check the black bill and the yellow feet, and then watch the feet go to work.
Sources
- Snowy Egret Life History | Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds — the yellow feet paddling and probing to round up prey; lake-edge and marsh foraging; colony nesting; the plume trade and its end in North America in 1910.
- Snowy Egret | Audubon Field Guide — black bill, black legs and bright yellow feet; measurements; feet stirring bottom sediments to startle prey; the 19th-century plume slaughter and the species' recovery.
- Great Egret | Audubon Field Guide — the great egret's yellow bill and black legs, the mark that tells the two white herons apart.
- Snowy Egrets and Herons | National Park Service, Alcatraz Island — the Alcatraz Island colony, the first snowy egrets in 1997 and 79 pairs by 2007, and the National Audubon Society's founding in response to the species' near extinction.
- Snowy egret | Wikipedia — the long breeding plumes (aigrettes) on the nape and neck, and the species' protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.
- Golden Gate Park--Blue Heron Lake & Strawberry Hill | eBird hotspot — snowy egret recorded at Blue Heron Lake on 30 July 2026.
- Golden Gate Park--North Lake | eBird — snowy egret recorded at North Lake on 12 September 2026.
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