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Purple Heron

Purple Heron

Ardea purpurea

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The Purple Heron is a slim, dark heron that breeds across Africa, central and southern Europe and southern and eastern Asia. Slimmer and darker than the Grey Heron, it skulks in dense reedbeds. European birds migrate to Africa south of the Sahara, while most African and tropical Asian birds are resident. Despite declines from wetland drainage, it is of Least Concern and occasionally overshoots into northern Europe in spring.

Did you know?

  • Even the nestlings adopt its typical oblique, snake-like neck posture.
  • Western birds sometimes overshoot on spring migration and appear as vagrants in northern Europe.

Voice

Flight call
Alarm call

About the species

Identification

A slender, dark heron with a thin, snake-like neck, chestnut neck with black stripes, dark grey back and dark chestnut underparts. The bill is long and yellowish. In flight it looks darker and slimmer than Grey Heron, with a bulging neck, large feet and uniformly dark wings. Juveniles are sandy brown.

Family

Ardeidae

Size

Large (crow)

Colours

brown, grey, black, orange

About the habitat

Freshwater marshes, lagoons and lake margins with extensive reedbeds; also riverbanks, ditches and canals.

Diet

Fish, frogs, insects, snakes and small rodents, taken by slow stalking through reeds or by standing motionless in ambush.

Behaviour

A secretive heron that often adopts a snake-like, obliquely extended neck posture. Its call is a higher-pitched, softer “fraank” than the Grey Heron's. Breeds colonially, building bulky nests of dead reeds or sticks in dense vegetation; both parents incubate about five bluish-green eggs for roughly four weeks, and the young fledge about six weeks later.

Sources

Photo: Pierre Dalous, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ardpur2 (cropped).jpg

Sound: Joost van Bruggen, XC432223, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/432223

Sound: Sudipto Roy, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ardea_purpurea_-_Purple_Heron_XC135429.ogg

Text: Wikipedia (English), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_heron

See also