by Ted Below
Occasionally one or two white feathers are observed in the very dark herons (Little Blue and Tricolored) but the following is extremely abnormal. Several weeks after Christmas I got an email from Dave Smith, who used to do Christmas Bird Counts in Naples and now lives in Maryland. The message told about two of his friends kayaking in the Ten Thousand Islands, south of Marco Island (12/27/01) and had a photo attached that showed a Little Blue Heron with an all white head and neck Dave asked me if I knew anything about it?
OH BOY! Did I know about it. I feel it is the same bird we have been tracking since 1988. This is the tale.
On 4/24/88, while sitting in a blind in the middle of a wader (herons, egrets and ibis) colony recording nesting, a Little Blue Heron with an all white head and neck appeared directly in front of the port I was observing from. Immediately I grabbed the camera and shot some slides, left.
This started an intriguing episode that still continues, as evidenced by the sighting above. That first day after shooting about ten slides the Little Blue quickly disappeared down into understory of the mangroves and I finished my census, left the blind and put my equipment in the boat. After that, took a quick walk around to see if I could spot the white head in a nest, no luck. I did not want to disturb the birds so did not spend much time looking. Six weeks later at the same location I shot some slides of what appeared to be the same bird. By this time I had made some inquires and found out that other than a very occasional white feather in adult Little Blue Herons, no plumage like this has ever been recorded. In the next few months I distributed photos of the bird throughout the ornithological community and not even the world authorities on wading birds had ever seen or heard of any aberrant plumage in Little Blue Herons.
Note: As there are no other records of this kind of plumage in Little Blue Herons and most of the sightings occurred at the Marco colony I am assuming that there is only one such bird in the area. There is absolutely no way to prove that each sighting is of the same bird other than the uniqueness of the plumage and this to me is enough to indicate that is the same bird.
In 1989 a Little Blue with the same plumage was observed and photographed twice in the same location. The next year (1990) at the blind, an adult Little Blue Heron with light gray head and neck instead of white was photographed on two different dates. The timing was right for this bird to have been produced by the white headed and necked Little Blue and an all blue mate. This bird was never recorded again.
At sundown in April of 1993, the white headed and necked Little Blue flew in heading for the blind. On the second of May that year the white headed and necked Little Blue appeared and was photographed in the same location, in front of the blind. This was the last time this bird was seen from the blind. In 1995 the white headed and necked Little Blue was seen twice in April flying into the blind area. One of my volunteers (Sue Davis) while flying a helicopter survey (5/15/96) near Everglades City observed a white headed and necked Little Blue flying beneath her. In the year 2000, the bird was recorded flying into the colony headed for the same location three times at sundown. In the summer of 2001, the white headed and necked Little Blue was again noted once in April and once in June flying in toward the blind at sunset.
With the sighting December 2001, this bird has to be at least seventeen years old and that is about as long as they live. As I have said above, this is assuming that this is the same bird. It would seem unlikely that another individual would have the same exact amount of white plumage as this individual, nor do I believe that a different bird would be observed in the same area or headed toward it.
In the intervening years I have done an international search for any information pertaining to aberrant plumage in Little Blue Herons, to no avail. Occasionally in long term monitoring studies oddities occur, that this one happened over such a long period of time, so often, is really intriguing. What wonderful information could be gained from waders that could be easily identified as individuals, while doing a long term project.
First published in the Collier County Audubon Society's newsletter, Audugram, in March, 2003. Photograph taken by Ted Below in April, 1989.