Immature Little Blue Heron

When we saw this white bird with the green legs in Florida last month, we had no idea what it was. My blogging friend, Gail, from Louisiana Belle, helped me to identify it as an immature Little Blue Heron. It seems that this species of heron is the only one in which first-year birds show dramatically different coloration from adults. First-year birds are pure white, while adults are blue.

Little Blue Heron

There seemed to be a fairly large population of Little Blue Herons at Fred Howard Beach in Florida last month. Regretfully, none of my photos do them justice; but I wanted to share them here anyway. At the end of the post is a very short video that Doug shot with our camcorder.

This photo shows the blue color better than the others. The neck is sort of purplish.

This image was taken from the camcorder video.