Yesterday, we posted about people fishing in the Gowanus Canal, catching foot-long bluefish and eating the catch. The bird on the Gowanus in this photo is also fishing. In the past, we’ve posted about herons and other birds around our favorite canal, but we’d never seen one of them for ourselves. So, we were excited this weekend to see this one and get a couple of photos of him/her with our own lens. Sadly, we didn’t have our telephoto on us. This was taken from the Third Street Bridge looking South. We don’t believe that it is the Black Crowned Heron they call Manzana. We think it’s this bird, which our readers believe to be either a Green Heron or an American Bittern.
UPDATE: Two readers point out that the bird in question is a cormorant. One writes that “Cormorants are excellent swimmers and divers, and can be found in waters all around the Brooklyn & Manhattan waterfront.”
4 responses so far ↓
1 Linda // Nov 7, 2007 at 7:18 am
It’s a cormorant. Lots of fun to watch them dive, then try to guess where they’ll resurface.
2 Anonymous // Nov 7, 2007 at 8:39 am
A Cormorant, indeed. Herons do not have the webbed feet required to paddle around in the water, like this fellow is doing in your photograph. Herons, like the one pictured in your link, have long skinny toes for beach walking and fish stalking.
Cormorants are excellent swimmers and divers, and can be found in waters all around the Brooklyn & Manhattan waterfront.
3 BirdWatcherOne // Nov 26, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Check out harbor herons to see good pics of herons. Cormorants are usually black, while the harbor herons tend to be grey, or white, see the attached link for more pics and info.
http://www.nycaudubon.org/projects/harborherons/
4 BirdWatcherOne // Nov 26, 2007 at 2:57 pm
http://www.nycaudubon.org/projects/harborherons/