Wiktionary
n. A small heron, ''Egretta thula'', having white plumage.
WordNet
n. small New World egret [syn: snowy heron, Egretta thula]
Wikipedia
The snowy egret (Egretta thula) is a small white heron. The genus name comes from the Provençal French for the little egret Aigrette, a diminutive of Aigron," heron". The species name thula is the Araucano for the Black-necked Swan, applied to this species in error by Chilean naturalist Juan Ignacio Molina in 1782.
The snowy egret is the American counterpart to the very similar Old World little egret, which has established a foothold in the Bahamas. At one time, the beautiful plumes of the snowy egret were in great demand by market hunters as decorations for women's hats. This reduced the population of the species to dangerously low levels. Now protected in the United States by law, under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, this bird's population has rebounded.
Usage examples of "snowy egret".
A gusting wind tugged and howled about the inferno that had once been the Best Western Snowy Egret.
Then his sight cleared and Ryan recognized the creature as a snowy egret, rising from a bunch of cottonwoods a hundred yards to the south.
Off behind them, in the foothills, Ryan glimpsed again the snowy egret that he'd noticed around the area since they'd arrived there a few days earlier.
In stark contrast to the massed imp is they wore kilts made of strips of white oxhide, and tall headdresses of snowy egret feathers.
Then, Sanda came to him as a woman with the head of a bird - a snowy egret with downy feathers glistening of beaded water.
On Sunday, a single snowy egret searched for minnows from the shore of a jagged, blasted-out creek.
A snowy egret launched itself from the shallows and flew off into the rising wind, its wings flashing starkly white against sky and water.
The night chorus begins to sing, frogs and lubbers and crickets, and occasionally you'll catch a glimpse of the rarest creatures of the Atchafalaya -- a bear or a bobcat or the great white flag of a snowy egret hurling itself into the velvet dark with a thunder of mighty wings.
She moved with an elegant awkwardness, as if--as if--as if, he thought, she were a large-winged crane or snowy egret, a creature who would be superbly graceful the moment she took flight, for air would be her natural element, not earth.
A magnificent sight they were, with their white fighting-shields, their gleaming spears, their otter-skin caps, their kilts and armlets of white bulls' tails, and the snowy egret plumes which they wore upon their brows.
Above his head, in a gold rococo frame, hung a massive Audubon painting depicting the mating ritual of the snowy egret.