The third share of the beautiful heron bird of the Jialu River - the cute night heron sub-adult bird

Some time ago, I shared with you the cute night heron adult birds of the Jialu River, but recently the night heron sub-adult birds have become the mainstream here, flying on the river, and there are more sub-adult birds that stay foraging than adult birds, so these days shoot a lot of silly night herons.

Before sharing the picture, let's give you a brief introduction to the sub-adult birds.

Sub-adult refers to the individual developmental state after the larval stage and before the adult stage during ontology, in other words, sub-adult birds mainly refer to birds that can be eaten independently, but are not sexually mature. This stage of growth is not a stage that every bird will go through, some birds directly from young birds to adult birds, and some birds will have a sub-adult stage, the main difference is that some birds that can mature within a year directly skip the stage of sub-adult birds, and those birds that take many years to mature sexually are called sub-adult birds, and night herons are birds with this sub-adult stage!

Identification of night herons as sub-adult birds and adult birds

The color difference between adult and sub-adult feathers of night herons is very large,

Sub-adult birds: with brown longitudinal stripes and spots, the female is smaller than the male, and the night heron will be numb in the sub-adult stage, because the night heron will be weaker at this stage, and it needs to make her body numb, so as to hide in the environment and avoid some predators to improve the chance of survival.

Adult: The crown is black , the neck and thorax are white , the neck and back have two white filamentous feathers , the back is black , and the wings and tail are gray. During the breeding season, the legs and eyes first become red.

You can refer to the picture of the adult bird of the night heron released earlier and the sub-adult bird released today for a very different and interesting comparison!