• English: Intermediate egret
• Filipino: Tagak

For someone used to seeing small birds like maya, they do catch one’s attention for their size. Their name implies the existence of a great egret, which is larger.

Apparently, in Filipino tagak is a catch-all term for birds in family Ardeidae, which includes herons and egrets. This ambiguity illustrates the importance of scientific names: a common name can denote different species but a scientific name only applies to one species. But what is a species, anyway?

Additional resources:

• My YouTube playlist of these guys
• ebird.org pics and audio

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