This is a drawing I finished at the weekend. It’s a juvenile Squacco heron (Ardeola ralloides). These are lovely relatively small herons, that are plentiful down on the Ebro Delta in Spain. We saw lots of them the last time we were there. My goodness that seems like a long time ago. It was in fact September 2019.
We are hoping to revisit in the next year or so. We have been given a roadmap from the government. It’s not so much a map as a list of what we still can’t do and where we still can’t go, along with a vague indication of how long it will be till we can. At the moment, it is looking likely that we may be able to travel from late May onwards. However, since our government is hot on over promising and pretty rubbish at delivering, I think it may well be much later this year before we’ll be going to Europe again.
In the meantime, please appreciate this relatively small heron, with a fabulous name.
We have Great Blue Herons. They are one of my favorite waders.
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Herons are fabulously elegant and awkward at the same time. We love all of them. I’d love to see a blue heron.
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I get a kick when they fold up their necks while in flight.
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Your Squacco’s brilliant — it looks so lifelike that I feel I could ruffle its feathers! I hope you do manage to come over to Spain soon…
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Thank you Gilly. I enjoyed drawing this one. My goodness we hope to get away to ‘anywhere’ sometime this year. We would like to head south for at least some mediterranean weather. Who knows, but fingers crossed.
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