The tide was on the way out this morning for my walk on Broome’s Town Beach. There is a patch of mangroves at one end running out as a small point. At the end there is a dead tree that is a popular perch for raptors. It was possible to reach it but it still had waves lapping around it, well worth checking out but on this occasion unoccupied.
Returning to the beach around the seaward edge of the mangroves I found myself approaching a Striated Heron. It saw me before I saw it and was walking away into the trees. I suspect that stopping informs the bird that you’ve seen it and are interested in it, suspicious behaviour. I change direction, don’t look at the bird and slow down. Going off at a tangent means that the distance to the bird doesn’t decrease. On this occasion it worked well, the bird returned to the water’s edge, I sidled slowly closer. By the time I was kneeling in the sea, fully clothed it thought I was a harmless idiot and resumed feeding.
It was a successful hunter, the horizontal pose preceded a strike that was usually followed by a swallow. Small transparent fish are visible in some of the photos – if anyone can put a name to these please let me know in the comments.
The scientific name of the bird is Butorides striata. Buto is from Middle English Butor meaning Bittern, -oides is a Greek suffix meaning like, so like a bittern. Striata is from the Latin for streaked or striped. The rules of taxonomy a very strict but none forbid making a cocktail of any languages you like. An alternate popular name is Mangrove Heron and in the mangroves is where you are most likely to find it but it does venture further afield.
bobmcgee 
“it thought I was a harmless idiot” One could say you are being a little anthropomorphic on this blog. However, in this case I think not.