"Great Blue Heron - The Largest Wading Bird" Top 5 Page for this destination Everglades National Park Favorite Tip by grandmaR

Favorite thing: The Great Blue Heron breeds throughout much of the US around water, but it migrates south in the winter.

It is really hard to mistake this bird for any other bird - for one thing it's way bigger than any other bird.

The Great Blue Heron sometimes is white and is called the Great White Heron. But usually the big white birds are Great Egrets. The difference is that a Great Egret has a yellow bill and black legs while a Great Blue Heron has a yellow bill and YELLOW legs.

The Great White Herons also have a single white plume extending back from above eye which the Great Egret does not have.

Fondest memory: I saw a Great Blue Heron at the Anhinga Trail which was behaving most peculiarly. It had its wings held out along his body (kind of like a guy in a raincoat who was exposing himself), and he was kind of warbling. It's the next to last picture in my Travelogue.

I also got a really close up picture at Shark Valley. This picture resulted from my not being able to unzoom my digitial camera quickly enough to get the whole bird in the picture, but you can really see the head plumes well.