Audubon's purple heron

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my favorite Audubon's:

Purple heron, (today, reddish egret)

Since I've never been to the Keys or spent much time on the Gulf coast—it's on my bucket list, or in my case barrel list—I've never seen this egret. Audubon writes:

"The Purple Heron is a constant resident on the Florida Keys, to which it is so partial at all seasons that it never leaves them. Some individuals are seen as far east as Cape Florida, and westward along the Gulf of Mexico. Whether it may ever betake itself to fresh water I cannot say, but I never found one in such a situation. It is a more plump bird for its size than most other Herons, and in this respect resembles the Night Heron and the Yellow-crowned species, but possesses all the gracefulness of the tribe to which it belongs. 

The remarkable circumstance of this bird's changing from white to purple, will no doubt have some tendency to disconcert the systematists, who, it seems, pronounce all the birds which they name Egrets to be always white.”

In this case, he got it a bit wrong. There's two morphs: some reddish egrets are that color, while other reddish egrets are indeed white. 

By Audubon the naturalist, from his Ornithological Biography.

Why is Audubon relevant? Because in addition to his artistic talent, perseverance and derring-do, he was a d--- good naturalist. A lot of what we know today about birds, the audacious, often farouche, John James Audubon was the first to put in print.

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