All Contents © 2008 and before by J R Compton. All Rights Reserved. No Reproduction.
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All Contents © 2008 and before by J R Compton.
All Rights Reserved. No Reproduction.
OTHER PAGES: Index Herons v. Egrets Egrets Bibliography Current Journal Page
The Herons of North Texas, USA
THIS
PAGE: Great
Blue Little
Blue Green Yellow-crowned Black-crowned Tricolored
The Great Blue Heron
Great Blue Heron Flying Low - May 2007
Great Blue Herons are big — bigger than any other heron or egret — but not all that great in population. They are, in fact, much less numerous at White Rock Lake, here in Dallas, Texas, USA than our ubiquitous Great (white) Egrets, one of which I've seen run off a pair of Great Blues flying into its territory, although the GBH is larger and seemed the more likely victor in any skirmishes.
Either there are not very many Great Blues here or they're hiding somewhere more exclusive. They are a solitary lot. I've only seen as many as three together (except at Rogers Wildlife Rehabilitation, where they seemed to own the place) and they're usually not together. Perhaps they only stay together long enough to court and mate.
This page was updated May 12 2009. I am slowly replacing little pictures with bigger ones.
Great Blue Heron
Their long-neck flying form, feathers and long beaks all seem very familiar to this egret appreciator.
a Great Blue Heron of some distinctions
Great Blue Herons are gray, not blue, in direct sunshine — with white and brown striations more or less vertical down their neck and chest, and dark, almost black "crowns" on their heads. Sometimes, when seen with the sun behind them, like this, they seem black, but that's the shadow, not the bird.
Flaps Down, Wings Out - a Great Blue Sunning
Itself on
a roof at Rogers Wildlife Rehabilitation -
April 2009
This was the third time I'd seen a heron sun itself wiith wings down and out like this (Betsy calls it "the Buddha pose," so it's probably characteristic and useful. According to Rogers Wildlife Rehabilitation owner Kathy Rogers, birds have a special need for sunshine Vitamin D, and this bird is getting it directly. Its own solar collector.
I have often seen their cousins,
the cormorants, standing out in the lake airing and sunning their wings,
but cormorants hold their wings higher. Cormorants dive and soak their
feathers when they catch fish and other delectables under water..
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Little Blue Heron
Adult Little Blue Heron in the White Rock Lake Spillway After Big Rain
Little Blue Heron with a better camera and lens
Little Blue Herons are actually only just a little blue — in the upper portions of their beaks and as a sheen over their feathered bodies. Checking my files, I found other similar photographs from years before, all wading in the spillway. All alone. So the little blues are regular visitors here, though not in numbers.
As painters know, the blue is mostly from their tendency to say in well-shaded places, where they are illuminated by the open blue sky. We don't notice it much in real life, because our eyes adjust color automatically. We see their blue as gray, but cameras don't always.
Breeding Adult Little Blue Heron in full
Heads-up Courtship Mode - April 2009
I used to think there was only one Little Blue Heron around White Rock Lake and the rest of its extended family was hid out somewhere close. But that was before I stayed in the Medical Center Rookery one evening as the light failed. When it was almost dark, I saw wave after wave of Little Blue Herons flying from the direction of the Trinity River to the rookery. Perhaps hundreds of them. They are stealth birds, perhaps even more 'Night Herons' that the Black-capped and Yellow-capped varieties.
Little Blue Heron Flying By - September 11 2008
Every time I see a new photo of a Little Blue, it looks like an illustration by somebody who hasn't quite figured out what a heron looks like. The streamlined beak, especially in the flying shots, looks prehistoric, more like a pterodactyl.
Little Blue Heron Delivering a Stick for the Nest
Here a Little Blue in breeding season plumage delivers a piece of their nest.
Little Blue Catches a Fish - June 12 06 — 70-300mm
I had been checking this Little Blue early nearly every morning for a week. Neither of us are early risers, but it shows up well after the Black- and Yellow-crowned Herons, the hyper Snowy Egret and the placid, stately Great Egret do — usually about 8:30 CST, and I do mean "shows up." It may have been right there all the time, but it blends so well into the deep verdant reflections, that it always takes me a few minutes to pick it out.
By late morning, the creek is crawling with families of ducks, Muscovies, grackle. One morning there was even a flock of red-winged blackbirds flapping — and other life. When I finally found it amid all the color in that teeming creek, it was busy fishing, zig-zagging slowly across the brilliant wet green, ever closer to my side of the lagoon.
Little Blue Heron Wiggle Beaking Fish - June 12 06
Usually, it fishes like other herons and egrets, more active than the crowned herons or the great egrets, a little calmer than the hyper snowy. But it has this one particular technique I'd never seen before, and every time he employed it, it worked. In fact, while I've watched any gathering of hegrets (herons and egrets), it's always the Little Blue who catches the most fish.
Looking down into the water (as above), apparently concentrating on its prey, the Little Blue bobbles its head through a series of quizzical little left and right tilts, stopping at left and right extremes, figure-eighting side to side, very much like a fish.
It could just be following the fish, but it seems more involved than that, almost as if it were leading the fish into mirroring its motion. Then, suddenly, our little blue bird darts its beak into the water, and splashing and flapping for balance, pulls out and swallows another little silver fish.
The bluest blue I ever saw a Little Blue Heron be was in open shade — illuminated primarily by the deep blue sky — on 19 July 2007 when I shot this. I don't think it had anything to do with this beautiful color, but it was escaping from a raging, fully fluffed-out Snowy Egret on the steps of White Rock Lake's lower Spillway. Now, finally, I understand why someone might call this bird a Little Blue, even though it usually appears as a red and black..
The Exact Same Little Blue Heron a Few Seconds Later in Sunlight
This is what Little Blue Herons look like most of the time in bright sunlight. Hardly any blue at all. And enough red along the neck to confuse some people who think they could be Tri-color or Reddish egrets, who mostly hang out along the coast and are much bigger.
Immature Little Blue Herons flying (above) and swinging down for a landing (below)
Almost every time I photograph a Juvenile Little Blue Heron, I originally assumed it was an egret. When processing the image on my fairly large monitor, however, I see some subtle but startling differences. Egrets don't have black-tipped wings or green legs, lores (except for breeding and nesting) and feet. Only immature Little Blue Herons do.
Little White Little Blue Heron Changing into a Blue Little Blue Heron
When white, little, Little Blue Herons start to change into blue Little Blue Herons, they look like this while changing. Apparently, the black spots grow.
Tri-colored Heron
Tricolored Heron
At the time, this was the only Tri-colored Heron I'd ever seen, and when I saw it, I didn't know it was what it was. I had assumed it was a Great Blue Heron on May 3, 2008 at the Rookery where I saw it, and only figured it out after I had it on the page. Sorry for all the interference of the tree limbs. Someday I hope to add more pictures of Tri-coloreds here, but this is a start.
Tricolored Heron Up Close at Matagorda on the Texas Gulf Coast
Tricolored Herons have bluish gray beaks similar to Little Blue Herons — the forward part of which is darker towards black, although that's hard to see in this photo; big red eyes like the Night-Herons; pinkish gray legs and feet; dark head and forward bodies except for a stripe of white on their foreneck not unlike the Great Blue Heron's although thinner andmore contrasty; the underparts of their wings and bodies are white. Breeding adults have that jaunty white occipital plume.
Tricolored Heron Hunkered Down on a Nest in Dallas' Medical Center Rookery
This colorful bird was photographed after fellow birder Jason (a.k.a. Weazel) told me where to find a nest of them he'd seen and photographed. It took me awhile to find it. Actually Anna found it. It was so deep into the woods and high off the ground, it was a serious challenge to photograph. We strained to see any eggs or downy young but did not discover them. Yet.
Green Heron
Long and anything but green but
a juvenile Green Heron.
When we saw this bird in the creek near the Old Boathouse at White Rock Lake in Dallas, I thought it might be a bittern, because of its breast stripes, and it looked like a heron cousin. I was surprised that a bird with no discernable green could be called a Green Heron, but that's what it is. It does look green in some light.
My second realization — that continues to baffle — is the apparent size of these birds. The juvenile above (and standing below) looks much longer than the 18 inch maximum the books cite.
Green Heron Flapping
Probably the best, best-exposed and most detailed Green Heron series I ever photographed was in September 2007 and one other really good one from August of that year. On my Annotated Map of White Rock Lake, I named this little park on the west side of the lake, "Green Heron Park" in its honor.
Heron Shape
Green Herons sometimes appear tiny. When I saw this one in the reeds along the lake's east shore by the Arboretum, I estimated it could be as much as five inches high. When we returned to find it standing in the same reeds the next day, leap-frog flying from one reedy perch to the next down the shore, it seemed at least twice that size. Its striped tie had changed to neck and breast stripes, its overall color from black to brownish, and we noticed its fierce, grimacing smile extending behind its beak.
Grimacing Green Heron
(The grimacing teeth are markings.)
When we saw the red and blue adults on the edge of the Old Fish Hatchery area, we were surprised to perceive it as somewhat smaller than the juvenile we'd seen. Herons play visual tricks.
Adult Green Heron - June 10 2007
We were on the watch for them now, and we've seen the usually solitary birds in many places around the lake, at Sunset Bay, The Spillway Steps, both south of the Singing Bridge and north of there, as well as near The Arboretum.
Either they are just coming out, or because we are more aware of them, we see them more often. But we haven't had nearly enough visual contact with them to learn much more about Green Herons than what they look like. This page keeps accumulating new photographs and new understandings. Perhaps some of those will include this elusive species.
Yellow-crowned Night Heron
Showing No Yellow (in open shade, no sunlight) - As Close As I've Got - June 2 06
Yellow-crowned Night-Herons are also in short supply here (even more so since a Lakewood resident whose yard they'd chosen to have a stinky rookery on cleaned them out). I've only sighted two or three together along the same section of shore a couple of times, and I came upon this one by accident, while photographing a hyperactive Snowy Egret beating the water for fish. I was tiptoeing down the human side of the creek, trying not to trip over knobby, exposed roots while my concentration focused on the Snowy, when I was startled to see this bird [above] standing less than a dozen feet away — still, quiet, patient — in the reeds at water's edge along the lagoon.
Prey's Eye View - Adult Yellow-crowned
Night Heron
May 3 2007
I'd seen both Yellow- and Black-crowned Night-Herons there on recent evenings — though early June, but rarely more than two at a time, usually only one. I keep returning, hoping for better shots, though I skip weekends, as people will be everywhere, and the Crowns seem shy, even for herons.
Some books say Night-herons are nocturnal (hence the name), but I have not found that true. Both Yellow-crowned and Black-crowned Herons readily come out in sunlight, although they seem to favor shady places. I have often seen them early in the morning and late in the evening and only rarely at night, although it's dark then, so it's much more difficult to see anything.
Adult Yellow-crowned Night Heron Flying - April 17 03
The first one I saw was in a tree. The second, a few years later, stood near the middle of the creek, where I almost did not see it. These herons are very well camouflaged. The rakish, white Occipital Plume on adults only last through breeding season, so that may well color almost all their actions.
The heron did not quite manage
to pull this out of the murk. - June 6 06
I followed this Yellow-crown for more than an hour as it slowly, methodically, one slow, calculated step at a time, inched its way through vegetation along the creek. I had the camera on a tripod and kept the bird in sight all that time — long enough to attract a legion of chiggers I'm still itching with.
A couple times I saw my feathered friend catch, chew (!) and swallow smaller snacks, but it was after bigger game. I could not see what it saw in the sea-weedy water, but I got a shot of it almost catching it, but not able to pull it up out of the ooze.
I still wonder what our ambitious heron thought it could do with something that big.
Yellow-crown Night-Heron Standing on One Leg - June 13 06
A runner who had asked what kind of a bird that was, told me that in the 30 years he's been around the lake, he'd never seen a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron before. I like to think I notice things other people don't, but once one tunes in, they are not difficult to find — if you pay attention.
Later that same day, I saw another Yellow-crown standing on shore near Singing Bridge south of Mockingbird. I angled my car into the parking area, so I could shoot without startling it, while monitoring two guys unloading a canoe, since I've been considering floating devices to get me closer to wild birds.
While I was focused on the bird, the idiots with the canoe walked boisterously right up to where the bird stood and put their boat in, never even noticing the shy, elusive and quickly high-tailing Yellow-crowned Night-Heron.
Startled by Budding Naturalists, a Yellow-crowned
Night Heron Jumps Into Sudden Flight
Black-crowned Night Heron
Black-crowned Night Heron Fishing on the Spillway Steps - May 11 06 - s
This is still my best shot of a Black-crowned Night-Heron, here fishing from the concrete abutment below the walking bridge at the White Rock Lake Spillway. I've seen them there several times since, although they are not regular visitors. Heavy rains bring them out. Our continuing drought defeats us all.
Juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron flying June 1 06
When I saw this juvenile heron I didn't know whether it was a black- or yellow-crowned, but I bought a few new books and kept watching and photographing it. Life on the Creek is so fast, I can watch whole families evolve almost before my very eyes, if I keep them open.
Down to here, most of these photographs were taken in the evening, past sundown, so exact colors are difficult to pin down. This bird's legs and feet, however, are yellow, and its beak mostly is not.
Juvenile Black-crowned Night-Heron — May 28 2008
I may eventually be able to discern a juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron from a Yellow-crowned but when I'm photographing them all I usually know for sure is that they're juvies. One of the telltales is that the Black-crowned ones have large spots on their wing coverlets and Yellow-crowneds have tiny white spots and thin white edges.
Gradually, the tiny photographs on this page will be replaced by larger images with more detail.
Either Territorial or
Breeding Dominance Battle
Between Two Adult Black-crowned Night-Herons …
The interloper won, chasing the other away. June
4 06
I even captured a quick, but exciting, flap between two adult black-crowns. I believe the battle was over territory, although what I don't know about herons' inter-social activities could fill a web site. Before this episode, I thought of them as quiet, gentle birds.
They are like every other bird I've paid attention to long enough to get beyond well-focused portraits. I've seen egrets fight, grackles, European Starlings, pigeons, even red-wing blackbirds. Why not herons?
That young Black-crown
we've been watching is sure growing fast. It flew off soon
as I got this shot, but it's looking fine, all red-eyed and bushy-tailed. June
13 06
Meanwhile, I am upping my estimates for the heron population of White Rock Lake to maybe three or four dozen, considering how many habitats like this exist here. In the creek where I've been shooting they are only away from prying eyes if the eyes don't make much effort, which most don't.
My population guesses, like most of bird commentaries are largely uneducated. I'm relying on what I see and photograph, although I do constantly check my observations against the experts in my growing library, although I have seen as many as three juvenile Black-crowns in one place at one time. So there must be more out there.
Heron on the Rocks - Camouflage In Action
- June 22 06
Sometimes, they are almost impossible to see
hidden in plain sight among rocks. Squint. See?
This suite of web pages is an educational process, much like learning a new camera. It moves in fits and starts. This page has been and will continue being updated as my experience expands, every couple days or weeks or whenever.
The photo above is a case in point. I'd neglected to discuss their natural markings as camouflage. Perhaps because it is obvious to me, because I have learned over the past several months to find them exactly where I expected them.
They don't move for long periods of time, but when they do, they are easier to see. Often that slight movement has startled me. Surprised me. This morning (as I write this and made the photo above earlier today), I saw four Black-crowns in rapid succession. I'd never seen that many together — although I have since then.
Yesterday, somewhere else, I saw three juvenile Black-crowns in another rapid succession. I was glad, because that probably means there's lots more out there that I've never laid eyes upon, and I like that idea.
Black-crowned Night Heron
Alighting on the Dam
All words and photographs
copyright 2006 and 2007
by J R Compton. All Rights Reserved.
I'm not an expert,
yet. I'm just another
photographer with a fascination for birds.
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of February 17 2008, when I thought I'd lost the hit counter above
