Description: About 1.2m tall, with a wingspan of 2.1m. Generally have a blue-gray body, long neck, and dagger-like yellowish bill. They are distinctive in flight as they trail their long legs behind them and carry their necks bent in an S-shape. Their voice is a harsh croaking frahnk, frahnk.

Range: From southern Canada to northern Mexico, wintering in northern South America.

Habitat: Herons can be found wherever there is shallow water -salt, fresh, or brackish, including marshes, swamps, shores, tideflats, rivers and streams. In Victoria, large numbers are found at Esquimalt and Witty's Lagoons, while in the summer, birdwatchers are attracted to their nesting colony in Beacon Hill park. There is also a nesting colony on an island in Plumper Bay.

General: They lay 3-7 eggs on a shallow platform of m of sticks which they build in a tree, though sometimes concealed on the ground. They nest in colonies. Their prey includes fish, frogs, crabs, snakes, mice and insects which they wait patiently for before striking with their long neck and large beak.

Bovey, Robin, Campbell, Wayne, and Gates, Brian. 1989. Birds of Victoria and Vicinity. Lone Pine Publishing. Edmonton, Alberta.

Peterson, Roger Tory. 1990. Peterson Field Guides: Western Birds. Houghton Mifflin Company. New York, New York.

Udvardy, Miklos D. F. 1994. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Western Region. Chanticlear Press, Inc. New York, New York.

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