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| Snowy Egret, a type of heron, showing breeding feather plumes called aigretes. |
A walk along the edge of a body of water often reveals wading birds known as herons. Herons are birds in the Ardeidae family that are long-necked, long-legged, with long tapering bills, large wings, and soft plumage. Egrets are technically a type of heron, distinguished by most species being almost entirely white. Herons display various colors in their feathers and egrets often display showy ornamental plumes (called aigretes) in the breeding season.
Herons tend to be larger and more robust than egrets, and will often remain motionless to ambush prey while egrets are more active hunters that walk or shuffle along as they hunt in shallow water. In our area, some of the mostly commonly seen herons include the Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias), Green Heron (Butorides virescens), and Yellow-crowned Night Heron (Nyctanassa violacea).
The largest of the North American herons is the Great Blue Heron, standing 3 to 4 feet tall with a 5 to 6-foot wingspan. Overall they are blue-gray with a wide black stripe that is above and extends beyond the eye, and a long white foreneck streaked with black. Their hunting style includes a lightning-fast thrusting of the neck as they stab their prey of fish and amphibians with their strong pointed bills. In flight they are distinguished by very slow wingbeats, a tucked in S-shaped neck, and long trailing legs. Like most herons and egrets, these birds congregate together in colonies to build large stick nests in trees high off the ground during breeding season.
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| Great Blue Heron |
Comparatively, Green Herons are short and stocky, 1 to 1.5 feet tall with a wingspan of about 2 feet, and a thick neck that is often drawn up against their bodies. They are deep green on the back with a rich chestnut breast and neck and broad, rounded dark gray wings. They hunt while standing on vegetation, rocks, or solid ground in shallow water, not wading in as far as larger herons. Sometimes they use small tools such as twigs, insects, or feathers as bait, dropping them on the water’s surface to lure in fish before they snatch them with their daggerlike bills.
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| Green Heron |
Yellow-crowned Night Herons are also short and stocky herons, to 2 feet tall with a 3 to 4-foot wingspan, blocky heads and thick, relatively short bills. Overall cloudy gray, their distinguishing feature is their bold face pattern of a black head with a large white cheek patch, and a creamy yellow crown and elegant head plumes. Contrary to their common name, these herons hunt day or night, lunging forward from a bent over posture to catch their preferred prey of crayfish.
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| Yellow-crowned Night Heron |
Historically, feather plumes from herons and egrets were used to adorn hats in the 19th-century, as they were highly prized for their soft texture and dramatic movement. Approximately 75% of hats at that time were adorned with these feathers, and the massive demand drove many species to near extinction. This helped spark early conservation movements such as the Audubon Society. Today, we herald these magnificent birds, and the sale, possession, and trade of their feathers is prohibited by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 as well as by other environmental legislation.
