The Green Heron is a summer visitor to Fort Bend and lives year round nearer the coast on inland waterways, marshes, ponds and streams. The photo above depicts the beautiful plumage, but you’re more likely to see from a distance a hunkered, stocky bird standing quite still on water’s edge that appears dark brown or gray with slender yellow legs as the picture below shows.
Fish are their favorite food, which they stalk then stab with their large bill. A “tool-using” bird, they lure fish by dropping food such as bread crumbs on the water. This bird appears to have a lure in its mounth ready to drop in the water.
One of the smaller herons (around 16 inches—about the size of an American Crow), they are smaller than Yellow-Crowned Night Herons which are quite numerous in Quail Valley especially on Oyster Creek and marshy ponds on the golf courses.
Water birds are some of the very interesting birds you're likely to see near our creeks, marshes, ponds and water features, particularly golf courses without bulkheads that allow roughs such as the Quail Valley El Dorado and La Quinta courses.
Photos copyrighted by Quail Valley resident and international birder Margaret Sloan. View her international and national bird pictures by pressing this link.
See a bird you don't recognize in Fort Bend? Margaret has photographed 150+ bird species just in her suburban Fort Bend,Texas backyard alone. Narrow your initial search by viewing her full photo album of local birds, Birds of Quail Valley by pressing this link. They are organized by types of birds, so if it's a water bird for example, you may find one that helps you narrow your search. Then if you "google in" the name of the bird, you'll get info and all kinds of information and images. Sometimes if a species is remarkably different from adult you may find nothing, contact us and we'll do our best to help.
Researched and posted by Janice Scanlan. Click photos to enlarge them.
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