An 'all-dark' Grey Heron

The heronry contained a very unusual 'all dark' bird in June. I thought it was worth making a separate note out of this oddity rather than include it in the June summary.

Birds at the heronry were not especially visible during my visit, with about 12 counted. While I was there the completely dark bird (a juvenile? weird plumages often seem to be) flew in from the north and landed in one of the trees, close to a typical adult.

It wasn't black as such, but a weird super deep blue/purple. As far as I could tell it's whole plumage was uniform.

A really rubbish photo below. Birds are distant so it's the best I could do!

And again with the addition of pointers...

Very strange. I've certainly never seen a heron like this before. Hopfully it will survive a while and hang around the beck so I can get a better look at it / photo.