Animal
Great blue heron
Ardea herodias
The largest North American heron — a 4-foot-tall, slate-blue wading bird that hunts patiently along shorelines and freshwater margins. Common year-round at Staten Island's salt marshes, ponds, and tidal creeks: Lemon Creek Park, Mount Loretto's freshwater pond, the Greenbelt's wetlands, Wolfe's Pond Park, and the harbor edges.
Scientific
Ardea herodias stands 3.5–4.5 ft tall with a wingspan of 5.5–6.5 ft. Patient ambush predator on fish, frogs, snakes, small mammals, large insects. Solitary foragers but colonial nesters in waterside trees (“rookeries” of 5–500 nests). Year-round resident in much of the species’ range; some northern populations migratory.
On Staten Island
Common at every wetland-and-shoreline habitat type on the borough. Salt marshes (Lemon Creek, the harbor edges of the South Shore), freshwater ponds ([[mount-loretto-unique-area|Mount Loretto]], Wolfe’s Pond, Silver Lake), tidal creeks, the Greenbelt’s interior wetlands. Sightings are routine year-round; numbers peak in late summer when juveniles disperse from rookeries.
See also
Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.
- Substrate of: [[new-york-harbor-estuary]]
- Member of: [[animal]]
- Contained by: [[staten-island]]
Sources
- NYC Audubon SI bird-survey records
- Multi-decade great blue heron ecology literature
Rooted in life.
What links here, and how
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Scientific
substrate of
- Smooth cordgrass cordgrass marsh edges are principal foraging habitat for great blue herons and snowy egrets
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