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Tricolored Heron | Egretta tricolor
Witbuikreiger | Garceta tricolor
The Tricolored Heron is a slender, slate-blue heron with a white belly and a long, thin bill. It often hunts actively, running or with half-spread wings, in shallow salt water. In the guide area it is a common resident of the coasts from Mexico to Panama, joined in winter by birds from North America.
Voice
Usually silent away from the colony. When flushed a hoarse, low graa or aah; at the colony various grating and groaning sounds.
Recording: GABRIEL LEITE — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
56–76 cm. A slender heron with a long, thin neck and a long, fine bill. Head, neck, back and wings are slate-blue; a white stripe runs down the front of the neck, and the belly, flanks and underwing coverts are white, contrasting sharply in flight with the dark flight feathers. In the breeding season the bird carries pale, cream-coloured plumes on the back and a short white crest, the bill base and lores turn blue and the legs become pink to reddish. Outside the breeding season the bill is yellowish with a dark tip and the legs yellow-green. Juveniles have a rufous neck and rufous edges to the wing coverts, but already show the white belly. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Little Blue Heron Egretta caerulea is entirely dark, without a white belly or neck stripe, and has a grey-blue bill with a black tip. The dark morph of Reddish Egret Egretta rufescens is larger and bulkier, with a rufous, shaggy neck and in the breeding season a pink bill with a black tip; it also lacks the white belly. Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias is much larger and has a heavy, yellow bill.
Habitat
Mainly salt and brackish coastal waters: shallow lagoons, salt pans, mangroves, tidal mudflats and salt marshes; to a lesser extent freshwater marshes and ponds near the coast. It feeds mainly on small fish, also shrimps and other crustaceans, and often stands belly-deep in water to catch them. It breeds in mixed heron colonies, usually in mangroves or low scrub on islets.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In Mexico along the Pacific coast from Baja California and Sonora south to Chiapas, and along the Gulf coast from Tamaulipas through Veracruz and Tabasco to the Yucatán Peninsula; scarce inland. Further along both coasts of all of Central America, from Belize and Guatemala to Panama. Outside the guide area along the coasts of the eastern and southern United States, in the Caribbean and along the coasts of northern South America, south to Peru and north-eastern Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Occurs regularly in coastal lagoons and salt pans, such as at Celestún and Río Lagartos in Yucatán, in Marismas Nacionales in Nayarit and on the Gulf of Nicoya. The white belly is visible even at long range, especially on birds standing belly-deep in water or taking off.
Conservation status
Not threatened. In the guide area common along the coast, but dependent on mangroves and lagoons and therefore sensitive to coastal development and the construction of shrimp farms.
Scientific name
Egretta tricolor | (Müller, 1776)
Müller described the species in 1776 as Ardea tricolor; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Egretta was introduced in 1817 by Forster. Egretta comes from Provençal aigrette, the name for the little egret, a diminutive of aigron 'heron'. tricolor is Latin for 'three-coloured', after the blue-grey, white and rufous of the plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.