What the heck is this?

[MN Shutterbug]

I've looked thru my bird guides and cannot identify this strange looking bird. It's smaller than a great blue and larger than a green heron. It was overlooking a creek, so it's evidentally a fish eater.

[Birdsong]

You have been on a roll for new birds!! Just a guess--immature yellow crowned night heron??? Nice eye!

[MN Shutterbug]

Just a guess--immature yellow crowned night heron???

That's as close as I could get too, with my guides. What caused me to rethink is that my guides show the color and describe the color as grayish brown. There is no brown in this bird. Maybe it's morphing into an adult. Everything else points to your guess, Sarah.

[Steve Foss]

Sarah is right. The lack of brown is explained by the color temp of the bird. When there is both sun and shade in the image, subjects in the shade come out looking unnaturally cool (blue/purple), and warming up the color temp in photoshop would yield a browner bird.

[MN Shutterbug]

In other words, I should have changed the WB in RAW before converting. It looked like what I saw so changing the WB didn't occur to me.

[MN Shutterbug]

OK, I reopened my RAW and adjusted the color temp. It does make quite a difference. Maybe I should refer to my bird guides before I process the images so I know what color they are suppose to be.

[half-dutch]

OTOH what we see is what we see under the conditions, not what we adjust our images to.

The herons must be out these days. I have seen a number of greens recently, and I gotta say I don't know how they got named for that color.

[Birdsong]

The herons must be out these days. I have seen a number of greens recently, and I gotta say I don't know how they got named for that color.

I have seen greens, as well, and my grandson and I saw 15 egrets on one small pond.

[Steve Foss]

OTOH what we see is what we see under the conditions, not what we adjust our images to.

What our camera sensor "sees" and captures often does not reflect the same tonalities we saw with the naked eye, and the images need adjusting to some degree.