Juvenile Green Heron - July 22

I hung around the delta ponds for several hours yesterday, going back and forth twice from one end to the other. I watched 3 Green Herons there. One of them stalked a lot of prey and came closer and closer to me, walking the small logs in the pond like a logger. He caught 3 fish while I watched with binoculars. One fish was about 3 inches long and about an inch wide at the belly (from back to belly). The Heron extended his neck out and his whole head would go under water for an instant. Most often he came up with something, though not always.

I finally found a fledgling - one of this year's crop. This was where a bike bridge crosses the outlet from the whole delta ponds, just on the North side of Beltline and just a few hundred feet West from where that whole complex of Home Depot Chevron, Walmart and all those other stores are, Greenacres Rd and I-105/Ayers Rd. That stretch of the channel is beautiful. Not having biked or walked that bridge until now, I have not seen it before. It's not visible from the ramp (for cars) going onto Beltline. This channel is about 100 feet wide, highly vegetated, with clear slow moving water streaming through it, surrounded by trees and you can see about 1/8 mile or more of it from the bike bridge before it bends towards where it enters the Willamette. As soon as I saw it I stopped to appreciate it, even though it was about 4:30 and getting pretty hot by that time and I was in the direct sunlight. I scanned around with my binocs and saw the young Green Heron not far from me, standing on a log. Thinner body, a little shorter, legs gray instead of bright orange, and most of the back and neck were brown rather than the chestnut neck and deep green blue back of the adult. Streaked chest too. All the books mention the streaked chest being characteristic of the juvenile and say that lasts a year. The other Green Herons I have been watching must be yearlings then because they still had little bit of streaking on their breasts too, even though the rest of their coloration fully matched that of an adult.

It was fun to really spend some time studying the Herons as they hunted for food. They would turn and nervously watch EVERY single person that passed along the bike trail. I was sitting still on the ground for a long time so I had become invisible to them. They really are quite shy!