Palo Alto Baylands, 10/8/2007. (Taken on my birthday!) Caroline Lambert writes: "That's a Snowy Egret, not a Great Egret :-). A Great Egret would have a yellow bill. And most of the shorebirds are dowitchers… They are probably all Long-billed Dowitchers, but we do have a few Short-billed in every flock, it seems. In winter it is really hard, even for experts, to distinguish between them, and almost certainly not from a photograph like this."