The herons that live nearby have always appeared to me to be grey and so I have been calling them grey herons. Yesterday, though, I began to doubt that identification. It seems that grey and blue herons look a lot alike, and so I bow to you, dear reader, to provide me with certainty.

There have been two herons that visit the pond near my home until this spring when there was only one. Then, this summer, there were none and I feared that they had left forever.

Yesterday evening, as I was trying to watch a melodramatic production of Madame Bovary, the actors were upstaged by a heron that chose to rest on a tree outside my window. The heron caught my attention with its wingspan and kept it by posing on a branch and extending its fabulous neck. I was captivated!

The sky was cloudy which provided a pleasing backdrop, but as the sun was setting I saw the bird clearly only as it perched on the branch of a cedar tree. In flight it was in silhouette, and so I could not see its wing colours clearly. Thus, I leave it to you to view the following slideshow and decide whether it is a grey or blue heron. For reference, you can check out Birdfact.