When Marcy and I saw the bird Wednesday, it was plucking breast feathers. Which leads me to suspect that perhaps it's molting, and may hence stick around for a while. In any case you can see the breast plucking in a video I've posted to YouTube at http://www.flickr.com/photos/63381646@N02/7503380178/in/photostream
Howell's book on molt, however, indicates that in North American Ardeidae "Preformative molts are partial and can be protracted from fall into spring; they mainly involve head and body feathers and sometimes upperwing coverts."
So I guess that it's plucking breast feathers won't preclude it from moving on, if it so choses.
Kurt Schwarz Ellicott City HowCo Goawaybird at verizon dot net
--
|