Bird of the Day

Baby owls sleep down on their stomach because their heads are too heavy. They do that until they are large enough to sleep upright. :zzz:

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OK, that’s a relief.

The mouse, on the other hand, is presumably dead …

Also, I think this is a good excuse for a repost.

(on second thoughts I’ll remove the recognisable photo)

The best laid plans and all that

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Bloody hell. The chicken of the apocalypse.

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You’ve been judged and found lacking. :grin:

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I saw it this morning at the backyard of the church:


It’s about 50cm tall!
Any idea what species is it?

A Malayan night heron. You can see them around park areas quite often.

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First time I saw one
I was really surprised with how big it is!

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That’s huge. Seems to me they’d be quite tasty with some gravy and cranberry sauce.

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I have a theory they must taste horrible as they have little fear of approaching humans.

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I encountered this one recently. Thinks it’s so smart with 46K likes and all…

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The below isn’t about Malayan night heron, but Grey Heron. These sorts of birds appeared in medieval (?) feasts, but perhaps more because of dramatic appearance rather than taste. Sales pitch: “very fishy … rather stringy and reminiscent of moorhen”. (Oh, of course, like moorhen!)

Great fun: Heron pudding, a recipe from 1914. Make sure there aren’t any broken bones, because the bones are “filled with a fishy fluid”. Yum!

There’s roast heron in Game of Thrones, but no mention of the taste.

Searching “Malayan night heron recipes” fails to show anything useful. E-Bird link that, sadly, emphasizes biological rather than culinary features.

But hey, if you’re looking for a different twist on the newsworthy foreigner story, give it a shot! Or if not a shot, whatever mode of hunting that’s legal in New Taipei City.

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You sure? Colouring seems wrong…

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Oops, no, I mean I found zero information about dining on night herons (the bird in the picture); the only heron cooking information I could quickly find was grey heron stuff. Definitely not the same as the picture, but it seemed the closest analogue to @finley’s queries about tastiness of local avifauna.

EDIT: I think I should sue Mark Bittman for the badly mis-titled “How to Cook Everything.” Zero recipes for herons. I’ve been cheated!

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I’ve seen lots of these guys canoeing in Canada, and the shape was way off which made me check, but it seems when they tuck in that makes a difference; so I looked at the colouring. Actually, I know nothing about birds!

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As far as I can figure we’ve got Gray Herons here in Taipei, but not the Great Blue Ones. This mildly surprises me, because some of the herons I’ve seen here have looked really, really big.

But actually knowing how to identify birds is one of those things I’ve been meaning to learn more about, but neglecting to do, for many many years.

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