Juvenile Nankeen Night-Herons on the Molonglo

[Martin Butterfield <>]

While heading across the Plain this morning I noticed a birder peering into a scope so stopped to enquire what he was looking at. That was a Brown Falcon, but he said he'd had 2 possible Australasian Bitterns fly out of a hawthorn across a paddock and land some distance away in a creek line.  My pulse rate eventually dropped to about 180.

After quickly contacting the landholder we set off to look for the birds where he thought they'd landed.   They flushed when we weren't looking but two large brown lumbering heron-like things were spotted flying across the paddock and at least one landed in the Molonglo (accessible from the road).  On entering that area we soon spotted a bird ignoring the reeds and clambering about in some flood debris.  With a good look I am pretty confident this bird (and thus, logically, also the other) were in fact Juvenile Nankeen Night-Herons.

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So off we went and soon 

Martin Butterfield

http://franmart.blogspot.com.au/