Javan Pond Heron

The Javan Pond Heron, Ardeola speciosa is a wading bird of the heron family, found in shallow fresh and salt-water wetlands in Southeast Asia. Its diet comprises insects, fish, and crabs.

The Javan Pond Heron is typically 45 cm long with white wings, a yellow bill with a black tip, yellow eyes and legs. Its overall colour is orange, slaty and white during mating season, and brown and flecked with white out of the mating season. The non-breeding plumage is similar to that of the Chinese and Indian Pond Herons and is virtually indistinguishable in the field. It breeds from June to September. It is migratory.

Widespread throughout its large range, the Javan Pond Heron is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Read more about Javan Pond Heron:  Gallery

Famous quotes containing the word pond:

    This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice.... It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a few days’ duration in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)