Carol Ledford and I went up to Ridgefield NWR today to
have a look at the juvenile mystery Egret/Heron.

We had three reasonable views of the bird: first from
the blind, second from the E side of Rest Lake and
third from the N side of the parking area at the
blind. Light was best in the third.

I wish I could have seen it closer with better optics.


We think the bird is a juvenile Snowy Egret. This
bird shows yellow on its lores. The portion of the
bill from the head out about two-thirds toward the
bill tip appears yellowish. The bill tip is black.
We saw light legs, even though there is clearly a lot
of mud/muck on the legs as the bird walks around.
This bird is seldom still and is very animated, not
only walking /wading as it hunts, but flapping its
wings, fly-hopping, and running as it hunts / strikes.
The bird also moved around quite a bit, frequently
changing its position by 50 to 100 yards.

Ken Meyer took about 18 digital photos, some of which
show reasonable color, some of which are way far off.
The link to the MSN slide show site is:

http://tinyurl.com/l7ong


bill clemons
SW of Portland in Mtn Park
willclemons AT yahoo.com


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