I stalked a stalking bird this morning. I spy backyard bird #55, a Green Heron.

This stealthy little bird has been fishing and hunting around the muddy edges of our pond for a week or so, according to my husband who has been spotting it off and on.

This morning I left my husband and dog inside and tiptoed through the woods to the pond.

From a distance, the Green Heron is a dark, stocky bird hunched on slender yellow legs at the water’s edge, often hidden behind a tangle of leaves. Seen up close, it is a striking bird with a velvet-green back, rich chestnut body, and a dark cap often raised into a short crest.

I first saw and photographed one in the Everglades a couple of winters ago, along the Anhinga Trail. Photos HERE.

Cool fact from Cornell Lab of Ornithology…

The Green Heron is one of the world’s few tool-using bird species. It creates fishing lures with bread crusts, insects, earthworms, twigs, feathers, and other objects, dropping them on the surface of the water to entice small fish.

I will keep an eye out for that!

Green Herons eat mainly small fish such as minnows, sunfish, catfish, pickerel, carp, perch, gobies, shad, silverside, eels, and goldfish. They also feeds on insects, spiders, crustaceans, snails, amphibians, reptiles, and rodents.

Nicely camouflaged.

Green Herons are common and widespread, but they can be hard to see at first. Whereas larger herons tend to stand prominently in open parts of wetlands, Green Herons tend to be at the edges, in shallow water, or concealed in vegetation. Visit a wetland and carefully scan the banks looking for a small, hunch-backed bird with a long, straight bill staring intently at the water.

We are in a drought right now and the pond is the lowest level it’s been since we moved here 18 years ago. I hope some rain comes soon to replenish.

House sale update: we may be under contract soon.