I vote for the Andy Griffith Show's "Loaded Goat" as the funniest. Bet it's the only sitcom episode with an eatery named after it! ( In Mt Airy)
They are. Very shy and secretive. I've seen them flying into my norwegian spruces several times now. I don't have a non-phone camera and I just can't get close enough for a picture or even a better look. I think there are 3-4 of them around..lots of croaking certain times of the dry.
Been a while since I've seen a bittern now that you mention them but, yeah, they're pretty fun birds. They remind of this exchange from Guardians of the Galaxy:
Drax : I've mastered the ability of standing so incredibly still... that I become invisible to the eye... Watch.
Peter Quill : You're eating a Zargnut.
Drax : My movement... is so slow... that it's imperceptible.
Here's a suggestion of another possibility -- the black-crowned night-heron. They are known to be colonial nesters and often pick cedars or other evergreen trees. Green heron nesting is pretty much a single-nest operation near water or marsh. While the male night-heron is a striking black, gray and white, both the female and immature black-crowned night-herons are streaky and spotted and can resemble the green heron.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
You know, I did consider that and had been the look out for the male, which as you say is very distinctive. While I still haven't had a pristine, up close look of them, the call/song is a dead giveaway. They're frequently making the first 'song' in the link below which is itself very distinctive.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Green_Heron/sounds
The black-crowned night-heron has a wide distribution (although not Australia). You have seen the bird, not me, so your judgment is the appropriate test. Here is the distribution from Wikipedia:
The breeding habitat is fresh and salt-water wetlands throughout much of the world. The subspecies N. n. hoactli breeds in North and South America from Canada as far south as northern Argentina and Chile, ..., and the nominate race ... in Europe, Asia and Africa. Black-crowned night herons nest in colonies on platforms of sticks in a group of trees, or on the ground in protected locations such as islands or reedbeds. Three to eight eggs are laid.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Busted out to a state park over the weekend and caught a pretty good pileated woodpecker shot.
DSC_3015.jpg
Huntington Beach SP below Myrtle Beach is a great place to observe night herons. And painted buntings.
they go to Canada but for some reason my bird book shows they don't get over to VT, they stay west of here..but they're close enough that at some point they probably make a guest apperance...I'm a big fan of herons...some years ago I saw a great blue heron winter here, he hung out in the moving water below a dam (he's lucky it didn't freeze that year)...
Kayaking over the weekend and got this pic...
Osprey.jpg
"That young man has an extra step on his ladder the rest of us just don't have."
Nice osprey pic..
Nice to see some bobolinks today...their numbers are diminishing due to excessive cutting of grass areas...there are efforts underway to mow fields less often to let them breed more successfully...the VT Audubon Society has a Bobolink Project, which pays farmers to delay cutting fields. Score one for the bobolinks.