Chinese Pond-Heron

The Chinese pond heron is typically 47 cm (19 in) long with white wings, a yellow bill with a black tip, yellow eyes and legs. Its overall colour is red, blue and white during breeding season, and greyish-brown and flecked with white at other times.

It is found in shallow fresh and salt water wetlands and ponds in China and adjacent temperate and subtropical East Asia. Essentially a lowland bird, its range is delimited by the subarctic regions in the north, and by the mountain ranges in the west and south. The species is prone to some vagrancy. One individual in breeding plumage was seen by the river at Bonzon near Gangaw—just inside the Chin State of Burma—west of the species' usual range, on April 8, 1995. A stray bird stopping over on Saint Paul Island, Alaska on August 4–9, 1997 was the first recorded occurrence of this species in North America. Its food consists of insects, fish, and crustaceans. The Chinese pond heron often nests in mixed-species heronries. It lays a clutch of 3–6 blue-green eggs. It is fairly common and not considered a threatened species by the IUCN.