This bird was photographed in early July 1997 at Village Creek Drying Beds, Tarrant county, Texas:
- the combination of whitish eyes, dark gray distal lores and
greenish legs all point to LBHE, yet the basal part of the lores
is yellowish-green and the upper mandible appears to be all-dark;
note also the two short nape plumes plus downy "baby"
feathers on the crown. I think this is a very young LBHE, but
just for fun here is a bird to compare it with from England (look
especially at the head feathers):
with thanks to BIRDING WORLD magazine and Dave Nye for the use of the photograph.
- this photo
is part of a feature (in BIRDING WORLD Vol 11, #8) about a very
unusual juvenile egret seen in July 1998 at Stanpit Marsh, southern
England (coincidentally, this used to be my local patch in England)
- that bird had a clear-cut yellowish-flesh basal half to the
bill, was significantly larger than other nearby LIEGs, and had
some gingery-brown smudges on the wing-coverts (a feature sometimes
shown by juvenile white-morph Western Reef-Herons). UPDATE:
on August 3 1999 I photographed a juv. SNEG (at the same Texas
site as all the above) that had a gingery-brown wash on the back,
bend-of-the-wing, and nape; this bird also had a pale base to
the bill, but nowhere near as clean-cut as on the Stanpit Marsh
Egret - has anyone else seen young SNEGS with this ginger wash?:
