Happy Juneteenth!
We honor the legal abolition of the enslavement of peoples of African descent AND the ongoing struggle against its continuing white supremacist and patriarchal legacy.
The bird shown here is a Cattle Egret which symbolizes the African Diaspora, as fellow birder and author Christian Cooper points out. Originally found in Africa and parts of SE Asia and southern Europe, the Cattle Egret was driven by storm winds from Africa to the Americas in the late 19th century, around the time of the abolition. The versatile birds adapted to their new home and spread to warm-weather (and, increasingly, temperate) areas throughout this hemisphere.
Cattle Egrets are actually more closely related to the Herons (Ardea) than to the Egrets (Egretta). Unlike most of their relatives, Cattle Egrets favor open, grassy areas, rather than aquatic environments, and received their name from their frequent occurrence in pasture areas, where they forage on insects stirred up by the movement of cattle. The first bird was photographed in a pasture in the Valle de Viñales, Cuba, in March 2024. The second was taken with my old point-and-shoot when I was a fledgling birder in Antigua in April '21.
#birds #juneteenth #birdphotography #abolition #biodiversity #birdsofmastodon #caribbeanbirds
