Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)

Great Blue Heron, Ardea herodias


The Great Blue Heron is a large aquatic bird with pale-gray-blue coverts with fringes of feathers, a long neck that is paler gray-blue than its coverts, a long and pointed orange bill, a white face, a black eye line that extends to a long black crest plume, dark orange tarsi, and dark-gray large flight feathers.

Great Blue Heron, Ardea herodias

Waldport, OR
2009-04-07

The herons fly with their necks retracted. They fly slow and low.

Other Ardeidae species:

Great Egret
Ardea alba

Tricolored Heron
Egretta tricolor

Snowy Egret
Egretta thula

Least Bittern
Ixobrychus exilis