Green Heron

Green Heron
Ardea virescens, Linnaeus [now Butorides virescens] 
Octavo edition, plate 367

“The Green Herons feed all day long . . . [on] frogs, fishes, snails, tadpoles, water-lizards, crabs, and small quadrupeds . . . During the love-season they exhibit many curious gestures, erecting all the feathers of their neck, swelling their throat, and uttering a rough guttural note like qua, qua, several times repeated by the male as he struts before the female. . . . The flesh of this species affords tolerable eating, and Green Herons are not infrequently seen in the markets of our southern cities, especially of New Orleans.”

John James Audubon, Birds of America (New York: J.J. Audubon; Philadelphia: J. B. Chevalier, 1840-1844), vol. 6, p. 107.

View this bird in National Audubon Society Field Guide for North American Birds.