This is Newfoundlands third or fourth record, depending on how you look at it. The first record is from Oct 1996 of a bird that was collected and originally identified as a Great Blue Heron only to be re-identified by a keen grad student at MUN as a Gray Heron! A ship-assisted bird arrived in Sept 2002. And a widely seen bird was in Little Hearts Ease from at least March to June of 2013.
Todays bird was fairly easily identified as a Gray Heron based on the white thighs and white "shoulders". Studying the bird in the scope revealed a bill that was a brighter orange than what I can remember for Great Blue Herons. The sides of the necks were a pale gray and the streaking on the front of the neck was quite distinct from what I've ever seen for GBHEs: the streaking consisted of a few long dark vertical stripes.
I was surprised to see some cinnamon/rufous colouration mixed in with the gray of the covert feathers - although this was very limited.
The cap seemed to have a base colour of white - but had several "splotches" of dark markings throughout giving a pale gray appearance to the cap from a distance.
Based on these and other features I would identify this bird as a second year bird. Adult plumage is attained in the 3rd year of life for Great Blue & Gray Herons.
Below are a number of photos and a short video clip of the bird feeding. Note that all of these are taken with my Samsung S7 phone through a Swarovski Scope. The quality far surpassed any of the photos I got with my "real" camera.
