I saw this Heron in my garden (Box, Wiltshire) earlier this week. A Google search suggests it might be a juvenile Great Blue Heron and two bird enthusiasts have said they are highly confident it is one. I’m aware that if that is right, it is a very rare sighting.
Are you able to give a firm identification, based on these photos?
Our herring gulls are red listed birds. Think about that the next time you hear some flaming idiot calling for a cull of them.
TeeJay (Tony) already confirmed yesterday his thoughts on this in reply to your first post "It's a Grey Heron, Probably a juvenile as the colours look fairly muted and the black head stripe is not well defined." I agree with Tony and Clare. (Just a tip as I know this site is a bit old and clunky) You just need to reply to your original post to bump it up to the top instead of starting another.
(Pardon the Scottish Accent)
Thank you, Linda. I thought I'd answered this one so was surprised to see it pop up again.
Two records of Great Blue Heron have been recorded in the UK and it has been put on the British list. See HERE
However, I can't see any reason why this bird is anything other than a Grey Heron. What led you to believe it might be?
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Regards,Tony
My Flickr Photostream
That's the trouble with searches returning American websites. Always best to stick to UK sites as it can almost be guaranteed that novice bird watchers will have potential matches to sift through. Re "two bird enthusiasts", not sure if you know them, but it's frankly going against all the odds and is clearly an internet search based guess. At least you'll know for next time. The photos aren't clear, but are clear enough to show an immature grey heron with no unusual characteristics, as has been said above by others and in the previous post.
Pete
Birding is for everyone no matter how good or bad we are at it,enjoy it while you can
In reply to Hampshire Hog:
Many thanks Robbo. You're right, occam's razor should have sprung to mind and it's probably simply a UK species. It was actually this video on youtube (which is actually just static photos and came up in the top search results in google images) that made me wonder, as they look so very similar. www.youtube.com/watch I've never posted on this forum before (and I'm not an ornithologist), but I thought if it was something of interest to the community then I should share it for comment, plus I was curious as to what it was. Thanks again. I'll see if I can upload any more photos on the separate thread I also started.