Cas,
According to the taxonomy discussed in Christidis & Boles (2008), Eastern Great
Egret is Ardea modesta; Ardea alba is "Western Great Egret".
Great White Heron is the English name for the white form 'occidentalis' of
Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias in Florida, USA.
Pied and White-faced Herons are currently Egretta - therefore you are right:
they should be Pied and White-faced Egrets.
Although Great, Intermediate and Cattle Egret are apparently closer to
Ardea than to Egretta, I think we should keep their English names Egret. A
non-birding friend of mine was shown egrets at Kakadu NP and he told
me "I thought they were herons". I told him that he was
actually right, because egrets are herons. BTW several other languages
do not differ between herons and egrets (e.g. in German they are both
"Reiher" - Silberreiher for Great Egret, Seidenreiher for Little Egret,
Russreiher for Great-billed Heron...)
Nikolas
----------------
Nikolas Haass
Sydney, NSW
----- Original Message ----
From: Cas and Lisa Liber <>
To: Birding-Aus Aus <>
Sent: Tue, June 15, 2010 7:18:27 AM
Subject: Herons and Egrets (Ardea and Egretta) redux
I have been musing on this on reading about herons - given the
reclassification of a few and bird namer's penchants for redesigning names
along taxonomic lines (buttonquail, fairywrens etc.), there is an
opportunity to enlighten the populace with realigning the names of Ardeidae.
The Eastern Great Egret is Ardea alba, and 'Great White Heron' is/was
another name for the complex, so why not Eastern Great White Heron? Ditto
Pied Egret, White-faced Egret (the last is interesting - does the
connotation of an egret as white sit oddly with that one...)?
Cas
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