Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Juvenile Night Heron



40-13600 - Night Heron headshot
 
Since I don't have may photos of this species, I thought I'd post a couple images from a recent outing.   This is not a full grown bird, but rather a juvenile.  Night herons in this stage are sometimes mistaken for the American bittern, and they can sometimes look similar.  The night heron is usually more hunched over when perched, and I believe the larger orange eye of the night heron sets it apart.  There is also a dark brown mark under the neck of the American bittern that turns black in adults, and no such mark exists on the night heron.    An American bittern will often points its head and bill straight upward when startled.  [click on any image to enlarge]



40-13606 - Juvenile Night Heron
 

#89078 - Juvenile Night Heron

 

3 comments:

  1. Excellent work, Tim!

    I run into the same thing quite a bit that you did with the Kingfisher in one of the previous posts. It is hard to get close enough to a lot of the duck species around here and one ends up cropping the images much more than they would like and end up losing the fine detail, but still it gives one a decent image for their files until they hopefully get the opportunity they are looking for.

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