Overview

Little Blue Heron: Medium heron with slate-gray body and purple-blue head and neck. Eyes are yellow and bill is dark gray with black tip. Legs and feet are dark. The only dark heron species in North America in which the juvenile is white. Feeds on small crustaceans, vertebrates, and large insects.

Range and Habitat

Little Blue Heron: Found along the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts to Florida, but is most abundant along the Gulf of Mexico; also found in the West Indies and along both Mexican coasts south to South America. Prefers freshwater habitats such as ponds, lakes, marshes, swamps, and lagoons; sometimes found on marine coastlines.

Breeding and Nesting

Little Blue Heron: One to six pale blue-green eggs are laid in a flimsy stick nest, usually built 3 to 15 feet above the ground or water. Eggs are incubated for 22 to 24 days by both parents.

Foraging and Feeding

Little Blue Heron: Diet consists of fish, frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles, and crustaceans such as fiddler crabs, crayfish, and shrimp, aquatic insects, and spiders. When swamps and marshes become dry, it eats grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, and other grassland insects; forages by wading in shallow water.

Vocalization

Little Blue Heron: Squawks when alarmed. Emit various croaks and screams at nesting colonies.

Similar Species

Little Blue Heron: Reddish Egret is much larger and heavier-billed, has paler, shaggier neck, and blue-gray legs. Juvenile Snowy Egret has black legs and yellow feet.