Welcome, Mark, to Washington State

the great blue herons found here are indeed a sub-species: Ardea herodias fanini. They do have alot of black on their flanks, are somewhat smaller than other GBH, and are found only in the PNW and do not migrate, although they disperse from their heronries in the fall.

here's a link to the wikipedia page about GBH, which lists all the sub-species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blue_Heron

there are other pages you might be interested in looking at: www.heronsforever.org about the Black River heronry and http://heronhelpers.org/ about the Kiwanis Ravine heronry

Susan
> Message: 4> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:46:08 -0800> From: "Mark and Mary Neudorfer" <mneudorf at comcast.net>> Subject: [Tweeters] Great Blue Heron Black Flanks> To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>> Message-ID: <000d01c82707$c47140f0$4d53c2d0$ at net>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"> > I have just moved to Edmonds from Rhode Island. I photographed a Great Blue> Heron today at the Edmonds Marina. The bird has much more black on the> flanks that I see back East. Is this a regional variation, a molting phase,> or what? I would appreciate information about this.> > > > The bird photo is in the album at> http://picasaweb.google.com/MarkNeudorfer/PugetSoundWinter200708.> > > > Mark Neudorfer> > Edmonds, WA> > Mail to: mneudorf at comcast.net <mailto:mneudorf at cox.net> >
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