Tricolored Heron

Egretta tricolor

Garza Pechiblanca,
Garceta Tricolor

Audio (M. Oberle)

IDENTIFICATION: The Tricolored Heron is bluish gray with a white belly, and a thin white line up the front of the neck. Length: 66 cm.; weight: 300-400 g.

VOICE: Squawks when disturbed, but otherwise not vocal away from breeding sites. Audio (M. Oberle).

HABITAT: Forages mostly in shallow, salt water such as mangrove swamps, estuaries, lagoons, and shallow coastal waters.

HABITS: Feeds mostly on small fish, but occasionally eats amphibians and invertebrates. This heron usually forages alone, and has a very active feeding style---chasing fish with its feet and waving its wings like a cowboy herding cattle. It nests in treetop colonies, often with other species of herons. During nest building, the male rarely eats, if at all, while he hunts for twigs, delivers nesting material with much ceremony, and then guards the female while she builds the nest in preparation for the 3-4 blue-green eggs. Both sexes incubate the eggs in alternating 2-6 hour shifts during the 21-25 day incubation period. After several weeks, the young can swim and can climb by pulling themselves up with their bill, feet and wings. The young begin to fly 25-30 days after hatching, but the parents continue to feed them until 50-56 days after hatching.

STATUS AND CONSERVATION: Common, permanent resident of Puerto Rico, with the population increasing in winter as migrants arrive from North America. Tricolored Herons banded as far away as New Jersey have been recovered in Puerto Rico. Destruction and contamination of mangrove swamps and other marine wetlands have impacted this bird. It is particularly sensitive to human disturbance around nesting colonies. In some parts of its range, aquaculturists illegally shoot this species at fish farms.

RANGE: Breeds in the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas, and some of the eastern Caribbean islands; and along the coast of North America from southern Maine to northeastern Mexico, and from the Gulf of California to El Salvador. In South America the Tricolored Heron breeds on both coasts of Colombia, south to the mouth of the Amazon, and on the Pacific coast south to Peru. In Puerto Rico, regular sites to find this species are at the Boquer≤n Wildlife Refuge and in San Juan's Parque Central.

TAXONOMY: CICONIIFORMES; ARDEIDAE. Formerly called the Louisiana Heron.

References

Bent, A.C. 1926. Life histories of North American marsh birds. Smithsonian Instit. U.S. National Museum Bull. 135. (Reprinted by Dover Press, NY, 1963).

Frederick, P.C. 1997. Tricolored Heron (Egretta tricolor). in The birds of North America, No. 306 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). Acad. Nat. Sci., Philadelphia, PA, and Am. Ornithol. Union, Washington, D.C.

del Hoyo, J., A. Elliott, and J. Sargatal, eds. 1992. Handbook of Birds of the World, Vol. 1. Ostrich to ducks. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.

Miranda, L. and J.A. Collazo. 1997. Food habits of 4 species of wading birds (Ardeidae) in a tropical mangrove swamp. Colon. Waterbirds 20: 413-418.

Raffaele, H.A. 1989. A guide to the birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Princeton.

Raffaele, H.A. 1989. Una guía a las aves de Puerto Rico y las Islas Vírgenes. Publishing Resources, Inc., Santurce, PR.

Raffaele, H.A., J.W. Wiley, O.H. Garrido, A.R. Keith, and J.I. Raffaele. 1998. Guide to the birds of the West Indies. Princeton.

Saliva, J.E. 1994. Vieques y su fauna: Vieques wildlife manual. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Boquerón, PR.

Toland, B. 1999. Mid-air capture of fish by Tricolored Herons and Snowy Egrets in southeastern Florida. Florida Field Nat. 27:171-172.

Tricolored Heron, Spanish text

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