Great Blue Heron

Look for

A massive blue-gray wading bird — 4 feet tall, with a 6-foot wingspan. Long yellow dagger bill, long S-curved neck, long yellow legs. Plumes stream off the chest during breeding.

In flight: neck folded back against the body (cranes fly with neck straight; this is the best way to tell them apart).

Size: ~46" tall, wingspan ~6 feet.

Listen for

• Call: a deep, guttural, prehistoric-sounding "fraaahnk!" — startling when a heron flushes from a ditch.
• Otherwise mostly silent.

Where in Memphis

Every body of water in the metro:

• Wolf River, Shelby Farms lakes, Mississippi River, Ensley Bottoms, Meeman-Shelby ponds
• Park ponds, ditches, backyard koi ponds (yes, really)

Year-round resident. Numbers swell in winter as northern herons shift south.

Behavior

• Stand-and-wait hunters. They freeze at the water's edge, then lightning-strike a fish with the spear-bill.
• Eat almost anything they can swallow: fish, frogs, snakes, crayfish, voles, even ducklings and small songbirds.
• Colonial nesters — breeding "heronries" of 5–100+ nests in tall trees over water. Memphis has active heronries in the Wolf River system and at Reelfoot.

Story

"Blue crane" is the old Southern folk name. Actual cranes (like Sandhill Crane) are unrelated and fly with necks straight out — Great Blues fly necks folded.

Their silhouette at dusk on the Mississippi River is one of the oldest wildlife images in Memphis — Chickasaw mound builders depicted herons in shell and copper art long before European contact.

Fun facts

• Their neck has modified vertebrae that give them the lightning-strike mechanism — they can spear a fish faster than the human eye can track.
• Specialized feathers on the chest disintegrate into a fine powder ("powder down") used for feather care.
• Oldest known wild Great Blue Heron: 23+ years.
• They'll eat ducklings — wood duck moms famously keep their broods away from heronries.
• A flock of herons is called a "siege" or a "scattering."