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Great Blue Heron
Ardea herodias
Family: Ardeidae (Herons)
Description: The male and female look similar. Stands 4 feet tall, medium slate-gray, with narrow plumes sticking out over their back and breast. Their head is white with two black crown stripes.

Just like cranes and storks, the heron is a long-legged wading bird that uses its bill as a scissors when feeding on fish and other small creatures. (In general, any long-legged bird is likely to be a wading bird, just as any web-footed bird is likely to be a swimming bird) But in contrast to cranes and storks who fly with their neck outstretched, when herons fly, their neck forms an "S" shape. Heron wings beat slowly and their long legs hang straight down. They are usually solitary birds who are nocturnal.

Mexico and Florida's Great White Heron is actually a subspecies of the Great Blue Heron.

Nesting: Nest is built cooperatively by the male, who brings the material, and the female who does the building. She constructs a large platform of large sticks, lined with twigs, and leaves high in the tree. A single tree may contain a heron colony of several heron nests. The 3-6 eggs are incubated by both sexes over about 4 weeks.

Range: (April - October) Summers as far north as Southern New England including the Berkshires. Winters in Mexico to as far south as Venezuela.
printable field guide compliments of www.neotropicalbirds.org

Size: about 4 feet

Diet: Fish, frogs, snakes, crawfish
(animals found in shallow water)

Habitat: Usually standing in quiet, remote shallow fresh or salty water or marshes

Call: Deep trumpeting squawk
© 2003 by Trust for Wildlife. Developed with Knowledge Environments, Inc.