Green Herons are great birds. As a kid I didn’t really see them often. We lived outside of a small town and were adjacent to a large, vacant woodlot. While we had many birds, it just wasn’t the sort of habitat that had you bumping into Green Herons. After leaving that area, I started seeing them with some regularity, and they quickly became a favorite. They always struck me as having some prehistoric features: first, that croaking call, and then the “pteradactyl-ish” posture in flight. It is a seriously fun bird.
I really love their color palette. With beautiful design and spectacular color combinations, they seem bright and bold, but once you start looking for them in the wild, you realize how those patterns actually make for great camouflage. Many years ago, long before my wife and I were married, we’d often go to the Chagrin Metroparks in the Cleveland, Ohio area to go birding, hiking and mountain biking. At one of the ponds, some “greenies” were totally habituated to people. We could get amazingly close and spent a lot of time watching them hunt. What was really impressive was seeing them catch dragonflies as they zipped by. Talk about lightning reflexes!
We got a kick out of parents enthusiastically pointing the Green Herons out to their kids. More often than not, it seemed the parents had no idea what type of bird it actually was. Some favorite not-quite IDs were “some-sorta-crow-thing,” an “eagle” and a “baby blue herring.” We all start somewhere. They might not have known what it was, but they found it captivating. The enthusiasm for a new species exhibiting some fun behavior is an infectious way to start birding. Maybe that bird was the spark that ended up inspiring some future birders?
I’ve painted these a few times, but I think the last one was at least 25 years ago. It was definitely time to give them some attention again. I got the photos for this painting at Wildwood Park in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on a visit to see my mom and brothers.
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