Juvenile Egretta - New Jersey, United States - August (1 Viewer)

[cerw8385]

Hello Everyone,
This photo is not my own. It can be found on the following iNaturalist post: Typical Egrets (Genus Egretta) © Jane Tatlock

Do you think this bird is a Snowy Egret or Little Blue Heron? (Or something else?)

I personally believe this bird must be a juvenile Snowy Egret for the following reasons:

• Legs appear to have dark markings on the front
• Top of bill contrasts with the bottom
• Top of bill is not obviously bicolored

Further explanation for my ID can be found in the following Google Photos album: LBHE or SNEG?. This includes the original photo along with some different birds for comparison.

If this is a Little Blue Heron, I'd appreciate some pointers so that I don't misidentify more of these in the future.

Thanks in advance!


This is also my first post on this forum, so please let me know if posting photos from other sites (with proper attribution) is acceptable!

 

[Butty]

The bill is not that of a little blue heron, in shape or pattern. Herons' leg colour does all sorts of things, so I'd forget that.

 

[THE_FERN]

Just to confuse things, I think this is a little blue heron. Juv/imm snowy generally have the lores chrome yellow but there's no hint of this here. The bill is thicker than most individuals of snowy. The bill colouration is difficult to be certain of but I see the upper mandible as being closer to bicoloured than uniformly dark (snowy). For me, the distal half is faded but clearly darker than the base.

Legs of young snowy can be all yellow like this but more usually show hints of black if they aren't dark. In older birds at least, snowy would show thinner legs than here.

 

[qwerty5]

The bill color and shape seems much better for Little Blue than Snowy. I don't really see anything that should indicate Snowy myself, and lore and leg color indicate away from it.