The squacco heron (Ardeola ralloides).

Hello hivers, an happy Monday to you all! I hope you spent a nice weekend and a good start of a new working week. Today I'm here to share with you some pics I took yesterday while I was walking with my hubby Hive account@paolobeneforti along the side of the small river close to my home, where I use to go almost every day to clean my mind and to move my old legs watching birds and ducks.
While we were there, I noticed a new bird in a corner of the river. I've never seen a similar one here and so I use my camera (a Nikon Coolpix B700) to take some pics. At a first view it looked like a sort of heron with a short neck and unusual colors (in the shades of brown) on the head and on the back, while the wings were totally white.

When I came back at home I immediatly googled that bird to know its name and I read it was a squacco heron (Ardeola ralloides), not so common in my area. Just to know, the common italian name of it is "Sgarza ciuffetto", but you can read more about it here.

A curious fact about the Squacco heron: during the breeding season his neck become light blue and his legs become pink. ❤️ Watching the pics you can understand now it's not the breeding season for this kind of bird.