Unknown bird photographed near fabled "Paradise Road" in Wisconsin

i agree, it's either a sandhill crane or a blue heron. there are tons of these where my mother lives in shawano, they get huge.

Looks like a female blue heron to me. We have alot of those here in Idaho. The scale is not measurable enough to render a math/logic based hypothesis as far as size and mass are concerned. IMHO

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


As others said, not an emu.

Regarding the tough eating, you just gotta know how to cook it.

try this bird identifier....not sure how good it is...

www.rspb.org.uk...

As a member of the Audubon Society, I can say with 99.99999% assurance it is either a Sandhill Crane or even better, a juvenile Whooping Crane.

Heh was going to say a female Cassowary but after doing a quick google image check seems male and females look the same so it aint one of them (i had the idea that the females might be drab and missing the crest, which they arent).

Definitely looks man height, is that a corn field or maize? since im basing it on the dried leaves on the ground (corn stalk leaves are fairly large).

Not sure if its one of those sandhill cranes people are mentioning since its got a clear white band around the back of the neck at the base of the skull and that real dark hood rather than the more forward red one of the sandhill. (id also say the area under the throat near the beak is real dark, but not sure if thats part of the bird or something in the trees in the distance)

No idea though, not a big bird fan (now if it was a cat species id do my best to identify it ), but interesting pick all the same.

[edit on 20-7-2009 by BigfootNZ]

The legs are the biggest give away this bird isn't any kind of rattite(Walking bird.) All of those species have big, beefy thighs while the bird pictured doesn't. The more I look at it, I'm leaning towards a juvenile whooping crane just beginning to gain it's adult feathers.

Here is a photo of some further along
www.dnr.state.wi.us...

This picture is a picture of a EMU.

It's a sandhill crane.

www.carolinanature.com...

jakubjasinskiphotography.com...

I'm sure of it.

FSBlueApocalypse, I think you nailed it the first time. Good job.

Here's what I did to figure it out:

I went to What Bird

From there, I plugged in the location (Wisconsin), shape (long-legged), size (large), and bill shape (dagger). It gave me the results of Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, and Sandhill Crane. I looked up the juvenile, male adult, and female adult pictures for all of the above (even though I knew from experience that it was most likely Sandhill).

And voila!

[edit on 7/28/2009 by ravenshadow13]

Looks like a muddy flamingo to me ^_^