Hi, I photographed this guy this afternoon and could use some help on the ID. I think it is a juvenile striated heron, but it had enough yellow on its neck that I'm not certain that it isn't a black egret (I've never seen one before). It was on Ross River (a large but slow river) in Townsville, QLD. There is a dusky morhen in front of it in one of the photos which gives it a little bit of scale. Sorry about the quality of the images, I had to majorly reduce them to get below the 500KB requirement.
Thanks for the help
Yt1300,
freshwater habitat, size larger than moorhen, long neck, upright posture, yellow plume of feathers on the neck and lack of distinct black cap all says immature Black Bittern to me.
Thanks, it wasn't as dark as most of the black bittern pics I have seen, so I wasn't sure. I just moved to AU so I am still working on learning all of my birds (which is great fun since there are so many fantastic species here).
I suppose I should mention that I have seen some deifnate adult striated herons in the same area before (it was only a few kilometers upstream from the ocean).
lack of white flecks in wings excludes juvenile Striated Heron
note your comment about rducing pics to get below 500kb - you can use MS Office Picture Manager to achieve this
Peter