What does my humble blog have to do with Africa's big five? It'll be a while before you read about rhinos, elephants, lions, leopards or cape buffaloes in my posts. After all, I'm still mostly writing about Arizona wildlife and local natural history. But the term big five came to me as an apt description when I noticed I was seeing the same five heron species every time I explored the Phoenix area waterways.
Herons are in the ardeidae family, and live along freshwater shores. In Phoenix, their habitats are mostly near our parks' man-made lakes, so it's easy to find all five species at the same time you're admiring the ironic abundance of water in our arid landscape. Some members of the large family are called egrets while others are bitterns.
The five I consistently notice when hiking, running or just plain birding near some local lakes are the great blue heron, great egret, black-crowned night heron, snowy egret and green heron, listed in order of size from largest to smallest. They all seem to wade close to the shore of deeper lakes, eyeing their prey in the shallowest depths of the water, where they can quickly nab their kill. While they all have long necks, they always fly with them retracted. Two of them - the black-crowned and green herons - rarely seem to show them extended.
These five herons are the most popular and easy to find members of their family in Arizona. There are others that visit or call the home state, but they're not as easy to find. Locating a least bittern here might require a real safari!
 |
| Great egret. |
 |
| Great egret. |
 |
| Black-crowned night heron. |
 |
| Black-crowned night heron. |
 |
| Juvenile black-crowned night heron. |
 |
| Snowy egret. While much smaller than the great, he's got less yellow on his beak and more on his feet than his cousin. |
 |
| Snowy egret. |
 |
| Green heron. |
 |
| Green heron. |
 |
| Great blue heron. |
 |
| Great blue heron. |
 |
| Great blue heron with his catch. |
Comments
Post a Comment