All species › Pelicans, herons and ibises › Herons, egrets and bitterns › Agami Heron
Agami Heron | Agamia agami
Agamireiger | Garza agamí | Garça-da-mata
The Agami Heron is a medium-sized heron with a very long, thin bill and short legs. It hunts hidden along shaded forest streams and the vegetated edges of marshes in lowland rainforest. The plumage combines chestnut, dark green and silvery blue.
Voice
Usually silent. When alarmed and at the nest a low, rattling or grunting kr-kr-kr.
Recording: Gabriel Maldonado — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
66–76 cm, with a noticeably long, dagger-shaped bill, a long, thin neck and relatively short legs. Adults have glossy dark green back and wings, a chestnut neck and belly and a narrow whitish stripe down the foreneck. Long, silvery-blue plumes adorn the head and hindneck. In the breeding season the bare facial skin is bright red. Juveniles are dark brown above, with a black crown and pale, brown-streaked underparts. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Striated Heron Butorides striata is much smaller, with a shorter bill and a grey to grey-green back, and lacks the chestnut belly. Rufescent Tiger Heron Tigrisoma lineatum also has a rufous neck but is stockier, with a shorter, thicker bill and a greyish brown, finely mottled back.
Habitat
Shaded streams, swamp forest, palm swamps (aguajales), flooded forest and the densely vegetated edges of oxbow lakes (cochas) in lowland rainforest, mostly below 300 m. It stands motionless at the water's edge under overhanging vegetation and hunts mainly fish. It breeds in colonies, sometimes with other herons, in trees or shrubs over water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia in the lowlands of the Caribbean region, the Pacific coast and Amazonia. In Ecuador mainly in the Amazonian lowlands, very scarce in the west. In Peru and Bolivia in the Amazonian lowlands. Absent from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area from southern Mexico to Amazonian Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Scan slowly from a canoe along the banks of small streams and cochas with overhanging branches in the Amazonian lowlands; the bird often stands low in the shade, just above the water.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. The species depends on undisturbed lowland forest; deforestation in Amazonia and disturbance of breeding colonies threaten it.
Scientific name
Agamia agami | (Gmelin, 1789)
Gmelin described the species in 1789 as Ardea Agami; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Agamia was introduced in 1853 by Reichenbach. The genus name derives from agami, the indigenous name in French Guiana for the Grey-winged Trumpeter, which was applied to this heron as its species name. The species name agami is the indigenous name in French Guiana for the Grey-winged Trumpeter; Buffon used it for this heron from Cayenne. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.