All species › Pelicans, herons and ibises › Herons and bitterns › Great Blue Heron
Great Blue Heron | Ardea herodias
Amerikaanse blauwe reiger | Garza azulada
The Great Blue Heron is the largest heron in the region. Most birds are winter visitors from North America, but the species breeds locally in the north of the region and some birds also remain through the summer. Cuba also holds the all-white form, formerly treated as a separate species under the name Great White Heron.
Voice
Usually silent. When disturbed a deep, hoarse fraank or kraak, often repeated as it flies off.
Recording: Jeff Stewart — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
97–137 cm, large and heavy, with a long neck and a stout, dagger-shaped yellowish bill. Adults are blue-grey above, with a white crown and face, a broad black stripe above the eye ending in black plumes, and a grey to grey-brown neck with a vinous tinge and a black-and-white stripe down the front. The thighs and bend of the wing are rufous and the belly is streaked grey and white. Juveniles have a dark cap, greyer and duller plumage and rusty edges to the wing coverts. The white form is entirely white, with a yellow bill and pale, yellowish legs. In flight slow, deep wingbeats with the neck withdrawn.
Confusion species
Grey Heron Ardea cinerea, a rare vagrant to the Lesser Antilles and Trinidad and Tobago, is smaller and paler, with white thighs and wing bend and a paler neck. Cocoi Heron Ardea cocoi of Trinidad and Tobago has an all-black crown, a white neck and black belly sides. The white form differs from Great Egret Ardea alba by its larger, heavier build, stouter bill and pale rather than black legs. Little Blue Heron Egretta caerulea is much smaller and dark slate.
Habitat
Mangroves, tidal mudflats, salt pans and lagoons, shallow seagrass bays and rocky shores, also the edges of lakes, ponds and freshwater marshes. It hunts alone, standing or wading slowly, for fish, crabs, frogs and other prey. It nests in mangroves or trees on islets, singly or in small groups; the nest is a large platform of sticks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Winter visitor to the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Cuba, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the ABC Islands and San Andrés; less numerous in the Lesser Antilles and Trinidad and Tobago. It breeds locally in small numbers, including in Cuba. The white form breeds in small numbers in Cuba and is rarely seen elsewhere in the north of the region. Outside the region it breeds from southern Alaska and Canada through the United States to Mexico, and in the Galápagos Islands; northern birds winter south to northern South America.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Large coastal lagoons, mangroves and salt pans are most productive in the northern winter, especially in Cuba, the Bahamas and the ABC Islands. In Trinidad and Tobago and the Lesser Antilles any large grey heron deserves a check of the thighs and crown because of possible confusion with Grey and Cocoi Herons.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The North American breeding population is large. The small breeding populations in the region are sensitive to disturbance and the loss of mangroves.
Scientific name
Ardea herodias | Linnaeus, 1758
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Ardea in that same work. Ardea is the Latin word for 'heron'. herodias comes from the Greek erōdios 'heron'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Hudson Bay, Canada.