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Great Egret | Ardea alba
Grote zilverreiger | Garceta grande
The Great Egret is the largest white heron of the guide area, a bird of about a metre with a long, thin neck held in a deep S-curve at rest. It hunts by stalking slowly or standing motionless in shallow water. Around 1900 the species was heavily hunted in the Americas for the plumes of its breeding dress, which were used on ladies' hats. In the guide area it is a common resident of wetlands throughout the lowlands.
Voice
Usually silent. When disturbed a low, harsh, rattling kraak; at the colony various cackling and croaking sounds.
Recording: Xavier Riera — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
94–104 cm, slender, with a long neck and long black legs with black feet. The plumage is entirely white. The bill is yellow and rather heavy; the gape extends behind the eye. In the breeding season long, filmy plumes grow on the back and reach beyond the tail, the bare lores turn bright green and the bill may become partly dark. The sexes are alike; juveniles resemble non-breeding adults. In flight the neck is drawn in and the legs project far beyond the tail; the wingbeats are slow and deep.
Confusion species
Snowy Egret Egretta thula is much smaller, with a thin black bill and yellow feet. Young Little Blue Herons Egretta caerulea are white, but smaller, with a greyish bill with a dark tip and greenish legs. The white morph of Reddish Egret Egretta rufescens is smaller, with a pink, black-tipped bill and blue-grey legs. Cattle Egret Ardea ibis is small and stocky, with a short yellow bill and a short neck. The white morph of Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias, scarce in the north of the Yucatán Peninsula, is larger and heavier, with pale legs and a stouter bill.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes, shallow lagoons and estuaries, mangroves, shores of lakes and ponds, rice fields, flooded grassland and tidal mudflats; mainly in the lowlands, locally also at highland lakes. It eats mainly fish, also frogs, crabs, large insects and sometimes small reptiles. It roosts and breeds in colonies, often together with other herons, in mangroves or in trees and shrubs over water; the nest is a platform of sticks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In Mexico along both coasts, from Baja California and Sonora to Chiapas and from Tamaulipas through Veracruz and Tabasco to the Yucatán Peninsula, and locally at lakes and marshes inland. Further in the lowlands of all of Central America, from Belize and Guatemala to Panama, on both coasts. In the northern winter birds from North America join them. Outside the guide area in the Americas from southern Canada to Argentina and Chile, and further in Africa, South and East Asia, Australia and parts of Europe.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Large wetlands with shallow open water draw the largest numbers, such as the Pantanos de Centla in Tabasco, the lagoons of Marismas Nacionales in Nayarit and Palo Verde in Costa Rica, especially in the dry season when the water recedes. At a distance the species can be picked out among the other white herons by the length of the neck, the yellow bill and the black feet.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Populations have recovered since the persecution for plumes around 1900. Locally, drainage of wetlands, mangrove clearance and disturbance of breeding colonies are threats.
Scientific name
Ardea alba | 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'. alba is Latin for 'white'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Europe.