All species › Pelicans, herons and ibises › Herons and bitterns › Western reef heron
Western reef heron | Egretta gularis
Westelijke rifreiger | Garceta dimorfa
The western reef heron is the egret of the coral flat: an Egretta with a heavy, slightly drooping bill and thick legs, occurring in two colours — slate grey with a white throat stripe, or pure white. On the Red Sea it belongs to the tideline the way an oystercatcher belongs to an estuary; in Spain it is the bird that turns a whole hide of telescopes round.
Voice
Silent, even more so than little egret. When flushed it gives a low, hoarse kwok, short and grating, and squabbles at the tideline produce a rasping screech. At Red Sea colonies the usual heron grunting and croaking can be heard, but away from the nest you will almost never hear it.
No freely licensed recording is available for this species yet.
Identification
A shade larger and distinctly heavier than a little egret, with a longer, thicker neck and above all a stouter bill: deep at the base, with a slight droop to the upper mandible, and usually horn, olive or with a plainly yellow lower mandible. The legs are thick and dark, and the yellow runs higher than the toes — on many birds well up the tarsus. The slate morph is evenly dark grey with a crisp white throat stripe, sometimes with white in the wing; in display the lores flush pink and the bare parts warm up. The white morph is entirely white and gives itself away only by bill, legs and build. Between the two, grey birds blotched with white occur. In flight it looks heavier and more front-loaded than a little egret, with slower beats.
Confusion species
Only the white morph is a problem; a slate-grey bird is unmistakable in this region. Against little egret three things count, in this order. The bill: on little egret thin, straight, pointed and wholly black all year; on reef heron heavier, deeper at the base, slightly drooping and almost always carrying yellow or horn. The legs: little egret has black tarsi with sharply defined yellow toes, while the reef heron's legs are thicker and the yellow continues above the joint. Build and behaviour: the reef heron is bigger and bulkier with a thicker neck, and feeds more deliberately, often canopying its wings over the water, where a little egret runs and flicks. Be honest about where this ends — the two species interbreed, there are little egrets with some yellow at the base of the bill and reef herons with an almost dark one, and on Wikimedia Commons the two are regularly filed under each other's name. A white bird that fails any of the three points is better left unnamed. Great egret is far larger, has a yellow bill in winter and always black toes; cattle egret is small and stocky with a short yellow bill.
Habitat
Coastal in the strictest sense. It feeds on drying coral and rock flats, on mud and sandy shores on a falling tide, in mangrove and around harbours, and on the saltpans, fish ponds and sewage lagoons of Eilat and the Egyptian Red Sea coast. It avoids inland water; a reef heron over a farm ditch is by definition a bird in the wrong place.
Where the bird is most at home, classified with EUNIS — the European standard for habitats.
Range and movements
Originally a bird of the Atlantic coast of West Africa, of the Red Sea and the Gulf, and of the shores of the Indian Ocean. Within the map window Israel is the dependable place: small numbers are present all year on the Gulf of Aqaba at Eilat, and along the Egyptian Red Sea coast it is common. In Spain it appears regularly in small numbers, above all on the Atlantic side — the coasts of Huelva and Cádiz and the lower Guadalquivir — with further birds on the Mediterranean coast and in the Ebro Delta; these are usually white or intermediate individuals. Further north, to Italy and Turkey, it remains a matter of scattered records.
- Resident
- Breeding (summer)
- Winter
- Passage
- Migration direction
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
On the Red Sea simply walk the tideline as the water drops: on the exposed coral flat the bird usually stands alone, and one look tells you how heavy that bill is. In Spain the opposite applies — look for it among the little egrets on the saltpans and in the marismas, because the neighbours are the best scale bar available. When in doubt, photograph bill and legs square on from the side; those two frames settle at home what the field left open.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened (IUCN: Least Concern): the range covers three coastal zones and numbers look stable. Within the map window the totals are small and therefore fragile — building along the Red Sea coast, holidaymakers walking the reef flats and the loss of mangrove all press on it locally. For Europe the gain is mostly knowledge: the harder observers look at bill, legs and build, the clearer it becomes how often the bird is actually here.