Squacco Heron? - original footage

Another experiment regarding visitors to the channel. People interested in rare or unusual birds in an area are often not so interested in the less rare ones such as Sand Martins. Having found such a bird on one of his regular walks, our Adviser was amazed to find some disagreement not only about the species but to which Family it belonged, with some very experienced people favouring Curlew. Note that these people only saw this original footage. He thinks that it would be interesting to see what viewers make of the videos. This is the original footage, whilst 'Squacco Heron - parts slow motion to show the white plumage' shows some selections in slow motion.
The footage was taken between 9 and 9.30 am on the 5th July, 2007 at the confluence of the Tarff and Dee estuaries Galloway, Scotland, 54o51'28.08"N 4o02'48.55"W with a Panasonic NVDS 30 (10x optical zoom) video camera and the bird was c185 metres distant. Our Adviser was the only person to actually see the bird (through binoculars, 8x40 Swarovski) and immediately identified it as a 'bittern? species' and video recorded the rest of its appearance.
What do you think. Any comments would be appreciated.