Great Egret

The Great Egret (Ardea alba), also known as the Great White Egret or Common Egret or (now not in use) Great White Heron, and called kōtuku in New Zealand, is a large egret. Distributed across most of the tropical and warmer temperate regions of the world, in southern Europe and Asia it is rather localized. In North America it is more widely distributed, and it is ubiquitous across the sun-belt of the United States. It is sometimes confused with the Great White Heron in Florida, which is a white morph of the closely related Great Blue Heron (A. herodias). Note however that the name Great White Heron has occasionally been used to refer to the Great Egret