Learn how to differentiate a green heron from least bittern.
Readers have been sending me photographs of a bird they can’t quite identify but sort of looks like the illustration of a least bittern in their field guides.
I’ve clarified that the bird is a green heron but can be easily confused with a least bittern. The two birds may appear similar in size, shape, posture and coloration.
Yet green herons are roughly the size of crows, while least bitterns are roughly the size of blue jays. Both birds have spearshaped beaks for striking fish and other critters, and both have modestly long, S-shaped necks — longest in green herons — that fold into the shoulders as they hunker down in wetland vegetation.
Plumage on green herons includes a bluish-green back with the sides of the neck a deep mahogany. Plumage on least bitterns differs, with a black back and head cap, a tan neck variably streaked in white and large wing patches with a tawny sheen.
We can easily spot green herons because they’re relatively common in city and suburban bayous, streams and ponds lined with dense vegetation and trees. The birds favor vegetated ponds in Hermann Park, despite pedestrian traffic.
By contrast, least bitterns are difficult to spot because they typically live in reedy freshwater marshes close to the coast in places like Galveston Island State Park and Anahuac and Brazoria national wildlife refuges. The birds also are inherently stealthy, thanks to plumage blending with the color of marsh vegetation as they perch within a stand of cattails or other reedy plants.
The similarly diverse diet of green herons and least bitterns includes small fish, frogs, crayfish and dragonflies. The birds stalk prey along the water’s edge or merely hide motionless in vegetation while waiting for
hapless prey to come within striking range of their lightningfast spear-shape beaks.
Green herons use tools to hunt, an extraordinary skill rarely seen among other North
American birds. They’ll grab a leaf, a dragonfly, a crumb of discarded bread, a stray feather, or other suitable scrap to toss in the water as a fish lure.
Did we learn to fish from
green herons are did they learn to fish from us?
Both birds migrate here in the spring from wintering grounds in Latin America and stay until autumn, with most having departed
by the end of October. A few may remain through winter along the Texas coast, notably near the Rio Grande Valley.