Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)
Description: The Great Blue Heron is not actually blue. However, it is large (50-54 inches) gray bird that can be found near marshes, rivers, lakes, and shores. It has long legs, an “S” shaped neck, and a long thick bill. The Great Blue Heron’s head is white with a black crown stripe extending from each eye. Shaggy, reddish yellow feathers cover its shoulders, and the color extends up to its neck.
Habitat: It can be found near marshes, rivers, lakes, and shores.
Diet: It eats fish, frogs, snakes, and small mammals, and captures its prey by piercing it with its bill or by stalking.
Behaviors:
Miscellaneous:
Habitat: It can be found near marshes, rivers, lakes, and shores.
Diet: It eats fish, frogs, snakes, and small mammals, and captures its prey by piercing it with its bill or by stalking.
Behaviors:
- Great Blue Herons build their nests in high treetops, and often drop the remains of its prey onto the floor below
- When this heron, the largest and most abundant in North America, flies, it folds its neck close into its body and have a slow wing-beat
- Its call is similar to a deep hoarse croak, and although it hunts solitarily, it nests in colonies.
Miscellaneous:
- The Great Blue Heron has relatives that stretch across the country. The Great White Heron, exclusively found in Florida, is a white version of a Great Blue Heron, while the Wurdemann’s Heron is a combination of the two, has the body of a Great Blue Heron, but the head of the Great White Heron.