Pond Heron or Paddy Bird (Ardeola Grayii)

The pond heron when at rest is all brown, which is supplemented with maroon hair like plums on the back and long white crest during the breeding season. When it springs into flight the shimmering white wings, tail and rump flash into prominence. The bird also makes a harsh croaking sound when it plunges into flight but there is a lot more to its vocabulary than this; it has a variety of low conversational notes and peculiar mumbling sounds that a nesting pair utters.


¤ Easily Traceable

The pond heron is an egret like marsh bird found throughout the Indian subcontinent. You are likely to find it wading the shallows and the marsh for food wherever there is water. It can be found at a river, pond, roadside ditch, and the sea coast in mangrove swamps, tidal mudflats or in the paddy fields form where it has acquired its second name – paddy bird.

It stands hunched up at the remote corner of a water body watching and waiting patiently for the fish to come within reach before it picks on it in a flash. This habit has lead to an expression ‘saintly heron’ or as ‘saintly as a heron’ that facetiously suggests the visual similarity between a saint in meditation and the heron which stands at the water edge pretending to be absorbed in holy meditation, while all the while it is intending to pounce on its prey.