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Posted by Paul-the-other on 19:14:09 01/19/12
The picture posted below drew me into some research regarding this bird and most all the sources talk about the white morph being rare, and describe it etc. The sources (Sibley, Thayer,National Geographic) also talk about the dark morph as being this that or the other. What struck me as curious is that the use of the word "morph" in dark morph implies that that color is a deviation from some standard. Yet there seems to be no ordinary reddish egret. The dark morph is the more common. So why use the decsriptor "dark morph" instead of just saying that the darker bird with no white is the reddish egret. In short are there three reddish egrets or only two?
"Tis a puzzlement!
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