Grebes and Herons

[yourlibrarian]

We lucked out in catching this Pied-billed Grebe coming up from a successful hunt.



We see them out on the lake regularly, though they can be hard to get photos of both because they are on the small side and because they spend a lot of time diving. So these pics delighted us because not only was it close enough to capture clearly, but in the first one we got it coming up from a dive with dinner in its mouth! (Not so great for the fish, but...)



A few years ago we started seeing a green heron around our lake. It's always neat to see a "new" animal around here, though I found this one really oddly named. This second photo is the only one that gives any clue to its heron-ness in the way it can extend its neck. But it is a small bird, not even the size of a mallard, and does not seem to be green in any way.

Comments

[holyschist]

I love all grebes, but pied-billeds are the cutest of them all!

Herons I feel kind of come in two general shapes - extended at all time like great blues and egrets and usually squinched up but able to telescope that neck out like green herons, night herons, etc. Green...yeah, I mean, they have...some...greenish (teal?) feathers. Maybe "tricolored heron" got to be named first? But great blues aren't really blue (they look very similar to grey herons), and little blues can be downright purple, so in conclusion, common names = :shrugemoji:

(Green herons are wonderful, though - for years I only got glimpses of them at a distance, and then last summer there was a nest next to a park near me and for several weeks there were fledgling herons everywhere and they were actually fairly tolerant, so I went several times a week to watch them hunting. They lost the last bits of their dumb teenager fuzz very quickly!)

[yourlibrarian]

Haha, I have conversations like that with my SO -- "The orange one? You mean this brown one?"

That would be exciting to see some babies! We'll have to keep an eye out.

[holyschist]

Once they have fledged, the differences between subadult and adult are pretty subtle - at first they have some head fuzz, and then they're mostly just more spotty/less vibrant: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil:Butorides_virescens_(juvenile).jpg

If you can find a nest, awkward bby herons are SO awkward. <3 I never did figure out where the actual nest was.