Severson Dells

Last Friday’s posting, “Winnebago County Whooping Cranes?” and an excellent article on whooping cranes by Geri Nikolai in Tuesday’s Rockford Register Star have generated several reports of the rare birds. But in at least two instances, the white birds people thought were whooping cranes turned out to be great egrets.

Here are tips on how to tell the difference between the two.

Great egrets are beautiful white birds that hang around water to hunt fish and other aquatic critters. They are smaller than both whooping cranes and their cousin, the great
blue heron. They are often seen in northern Illinois, especially during fall and spring migrations.
Here are some other differences, according to National Geographic Society’s Field Guide to the Birds of North America, available in the Severson Dells Bookstore.

• Great egrets have white faces. Adult whooping Cranes have red facial skin.
• Great egrets have white wings. Adult whooping cranes have wings tipped in black.
• In flight, great egrets have crooked necks with the head pulled in. Whooping cranes fly with their necks straight out.

Click here for image of a whooping crane in flight.

Another water bird that summers in the northern Midwest and, according to the The Illinois Ornithological Society regularly visits Illinois, is the white pelican. Like the whooping Crane, it also has black-tipped wings. But it has a long orange bill. White pelicans do show up here, according to the Winnebago County Bird Checklist (download PDF) put out North Central Illinois Ornithological Society. They migrate through on their way to the Gulf coast from breeding grounds in Minnesota, Iowa and the Great Plains.

Thanks to Mary Kay Rubey for the photos. Some of MK’s work is for sale at the Severson Dells Bookstore in the form of bird notecards.

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