It's always exciting to walk out my back door in York and see some aspect of nature I hadn't quite expected. That happened recently when I spotted a brilliant white bird contrasted against the dark green waters of Hilton Pond.

The bird was taking slow, deliberate steps as it waded in the shallows, and its long snake-like neck and erect posture told me immediately it was one of the egrets. Up to its drumsticks in water, the bird almost appeared to be sitting on the surface. As it emerged onto the bank, its black legs and feet and long yellow bill gave me the diagnostic characters I needed to make a specific identification: Great Egret.

The Great Egret (see photo above), referred to in some field guides as the Common or American Egret, is a bird that most of us associate with South Carolina's coastal regions. These birds are indeed more common in the salt marshes and low country ponds we pass on our way to "The Beach," but several different species of waders also can be found in the Piedmont--particularly after post-breeding dispersal.

Such wading birds are grouped into Family Ardeidae, which includes the egrets, herons, night-herons, and bitterns. Many of these species are mistakenly called "cranes," and the best way to tell the long-legged egret family from the even longer-legged crane family is to watch the birds in flight. Egrets all fly with their necks coiled back to the body, while cranes resemble flying crosses with long necks and legs extended.

The most familiar and largest of the ardeids is the Great Blue Heron, which nests high in wooded swamps and heavily-treed river bottoms at the coast. Like many egrets, the Great Blue Heron is seldom seen inland until late summer, but individuals commonly spend winters around Piedmont ponds and streams. Looking more gray than blue, this stately bird could hardly be confused with any other avian species.

The Little Blue Heron is a distant relative of the Great Blue, and when Little Blue juveniles disperse into York County, they make egret identification much more difficult. Young Little Blues are white like Great Egrets, but their greenish legs and dark-tipped bluish bills help identify them. As the Little Blue Heron matures, some of its white feathers molt to blue, giving it a calico appearance. Eventually it acquires the solid plumage of the blue-bodied, maroon-necked adult.

Two other white-colored egrets occasionally are found in the region, those being the Snowy Egret and the Cattle Egret. The snowy can be identified by its black bill and legs contrasting with bright yellow feet, while the Cattle Egret is a much squatter bird with yellow bill and legs and a reddish crest in breeding adults. This latter species is of particular interest because it is not native to the United States. Apparently cattle egrets were blown from Africa to South America in about 1880, and offspring of those birds went on to populate much of the western hemisphere.

The Tri-colored or Louisiana Heron is a smaller wader I once saw fly over our York property in late summer. It is slate blue with a white belly and may be the most abundant native heron in the Southeast, but it very seldom gets to the Piedmont. More common locally is the Green-backed Heron, a crow-sized bird that breeds throughout the Carolinas. Each year at least one pair nests in the pine woods near my house, and in late July the adults bring their young to feed at Hilton Pond.

Two night-herons--the Black-crowned and Yellow-crowned--also appear rarely in these parts, although there is evidence that the latter species is breeding near the pond on the Winthrop College Farm in Rock Hill. Their head feathers, relatively short legs, and stocky bills are diagnostic.

Finally, the tiny Least Bittern and its large cousin the American Bittern may pass through the Piedmont during migration. They appear to prefer vast coastal marshlands for nesting, but little is known about their breeding status in the Carolinas.

Unless you're particularly enamored of birds, much of the above information may have been of little interest to you. Knowing the characteristics of all the wading birds is somewhat difficult, but with practice one can correctly identify even the immatures. If you spend some time looking at the long-legged waders next time you're at the beach, you'll find it much easier to pick out their field marks when they occasionally show up here in the Piedmont.

Although all herons and egrets resemble one another in form and behavior, other things they have in common have actually threatened their very existence. For example, nearly all these birds produce special breeding display feathers that are quite long and showy; in fact, a French word for plume--"aigrette"--gives egrets their English name.

After the turn of the century, when no woman's hat was complete without feathers, plume collectors nearly wiped out many species of waders. Commercial hunters shot huge numbers of herons and egrets in their breeding colonies, and it was this slaughter that actually brought the National Audubon Society into existence. Established to help protect wading birds from destruction, the NAS selected the Snowy Egret as its emblem and set aside tracts of marshland for its protection. Society activists so increased public awareness that plumed hats went out of vogue, and the conservation movement began gaining momentum in this country.

Despite the society's efforts, there is another common characteristic of waders that still may lead to their demise: nearly all egrets and herons eat crayfish, salamanders, fish, insects, small mammals, frogs, and other aquatic organisms. Most of these prey items occur in shallow streams, marshes, ponds, and swamps, and it is wetlands such as these that are under severe pressure from developers. A drained marsh is a dead marsh, and as the marsh dies, so do small aquatic animals. When the food supply is thus depleted, wading birds soon disappear.

In coastal areas where prime real estate often is covered by salt marsh, there is tremendous economic pressure for entrepreneurs to fill in the wetlands. Similar problems occur here in the Piedmont, where farmers try to "reclaim" just a few more acres by ditching off standing marsh water into streams and rivers.

Saving our wetlands is a major concern for anyone with environmental sensitivity. Egrets and herons, like many other birds, are excellent indicators of a healthy environment, and the environment certainly won't be healthy much longer if we continue to ravage our wetlands. The documented and continual decline of wading birds should be sufficient warning for us to change our errant ways, and to do so quickly.

I wish I could share my mental image of that magnificent white egret on Hilton Pond. I'm sure it would be all the stimulus you'd need to encourage protection of whatever wetlands we have left.