Expert: Julia Booth - 3/25/2008

Question
I go to college in the north harris area of spring, TX, which is about a 45 min drive north from Houston.  I was parking my car at the edge of the lot and found this really odd looking bird.  It was walking very slowly and it never made a sound.  I'd say it was 2-3ft high from eyeballing it.  I got about 6 feet from it before I left (had to go to class) and it never really backed away or ran, it just kept walking around on its lanky legs.  It had red eyes and a straight, pointed black beak.  It had spotted plumage/feathers, but what really threw me off was it had hair.  Obviously not like the hair i have, but like the kind certain penguins have.  There were maybe 5 strands of it that went straight back in a line, and they were all colored a very light yellow.  They went down to almost his tailfeather.  I've spent the last 2 hours searching the web and just can't find anything like it that would live in the southern US that far from water.  The edge of the parkinglot is a dense forest of undeveloped land.

Thats all i got on this bird.  If only my cellphone wasn't dead i coulda taken a picture of it.  I hope this info helps you-I really wanna know what I just saw.

Answer
Sounds to me like it could be either a Black or Yellow Crowned Night Heron -both have red eyes and during breeding season they have a special long plume which can take on the appearance of hair. They aren't normally found too far from water, but both are listed as common in almost all of the checklists I have for Texas.

Let me know if it's one of these. If not, we can start searching again.

Julia