Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.

A few weeks ago, as I concluded a short morning bird walk at one of our local parks, a woman with a small dog noticed my scope and binoculars. “See anything good?,” she asked. “Nothing unusual, but plenty of great birds,” I replied. “Last week, right here on the trail,” she told me, “I got to watch a snowy egret for a while. It was right there.” She pointed behind me at the nearby lake edge. I turned and, as if on cue, a snowy egret stepped out from behind some vegetation. “A snowy summoning!,” I proclaimed.

Although this elegant member of the heron family is a common bird in North and South American wetlands, the snowy egret’s population prospects weren’t always so sound. The species was threatened in the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to overhunting; the egret’s showy white breeding plumes were sought after for European women’s hats. In the 1880s, demand was so high that the plumes sold for twice the price of gold. Fortunately, some hunter-conservationists of the day noticed that populations of waterbirds were reeling from the combination of habitat loss and the myopic, kill-them-all-for-today’s-pay-day approach of market hunters; they resolved to take action. The reforms they managed to pass represent major victories for the then-nascent conservation movement and, importantly, allowed many waterbird and shorebird populations to recover. In the case of the snowy egret, the recovery was so pronounced that its range even expanded!

That said, it’s not all good news. In recent decades, as we continue to develop and degrade American wetland habitats, snowy egret populations on the Atlantic seaboard are declining. As a result, biologists are encouraging more study on the species’ population and threats.

Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).

Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.