Butorides virescens

An adult Green Heron. There were two. So let’s hope for some offspring, which have not been unknown in Brooklyn’s green heart. You are wondering, Mr. Bond, why this bird is named the Green Heron? Well, there’s kinda-sorta some green there on the back-ish. The species was formerly called the Green-backed Heron (this category including two other now separate species). Choate, in his invaluable Dictionary of American Bird Names, is not without humor in what is usually strictly reference: this bird has sometimes been called the Little Green Heron because it has so little green. Virescens means becoming green, which is even more wishful thinking. Compare with a juvenile here and here. The youngsters are much less likely to be described as Oxblood-necked Herons…

In case you missed it during all the hullabaloo about garbage person Roseanne Barr the other day, new estimates of the dead in Puerto Rico are well over 4000 because of the destruction of the medical system on the island. 4,645 American citizens: that’s far more than died on 9/11. But, you may say, that’s comparing apples and orange: a natural disaster and a political disaster. But all natural disasters are also political disasters: the racist Republican regime in Washington D.C. kills.