Our farm is home to all kinds of different species of wildlife many of which my husband and I can identify by sight or sound. Occasionally something that we are not familiar with grabs our attention and we search our reference books and the internet to try to identify it.
For the last two years this bird has lived in the area somewhere around our pond. We would often see it feeding on the edges of the pond. If we got to close it would usually fly up into a nearby tree. I have yet to see it this year.
After looking through our bird book and looking at various websites my best guess is that it is a Bittern. I would love to hear from anyone who could possibly confirm this or make another positive I.D.
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I haven’t checked out our blog enough to know what part of the US you live in, but I’d say, too, a bittern, though small heron is a possibility. I’m an avid bird-watcher myself. We have one type of bittern here; they freeze, beak pointed straight up, when danger is near.
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Go to Site Admin, then choose Settings from the left hand bar. Click on Writing. Your second option here is Default Post Category:Uncategorized. Choose something else. Home or Reflections or Thoughts — whatever general large category you most blog about. Then at the bottom of this page you must click on Save Changes.
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Thank you for reading. We live in Michigan. I have had a couple of people say the bird is a green heron. I am watching for it to show up this year to see if I can get a better look at it.
Thanks for the blog advice.
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Hello Ruth. How interesting to spot a bird you are not familiar with! i wish could help you, but I don’t know much about birds! I did just Google Brittern though, and it does look very similar 🙂 Happy nature watching!
– Carly
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Hi Carly,
It’s nice to hear from you. I have had a suggestion that it is a green heron. It is related to the bittern and they look very similar. I am sure it is one or the other. Have a great day!
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