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Goliath Heron | Ardea goliath
Goliathreiger | Garza Goliat
The Goliath Heron is the largest heron in the world: a rufous and grey giant that stands motionless for hours in the shallows of rivers and lakes, waiting for a large fish. It usually lives alone or in pairs and hunts prey too heavy for other herons.
Voice
A very deep, loud, barking kowoork-woork-work that carries far and is usually given on take-off; otherwise mostly silent.
Recording: Jonathan Onongo — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 140 cm, heavily built, with a long, thick neck and a massive dark bill. The head, crest and hindneck are warm rufous, and the throat and foreneck white with black streaks. The back and wings are slate grey, and the breast and belly deep chestnut. The legs are black. Juveniles are duller, with a paler, more greyish-brown head and neck. It flies on slow, heavy wingbeats with the neck retracted and the long legs projecting far behind; the underwing coverts are chestnut.
Confusion species
Purple Heron Ardea purpurea is similar in colour but much smaller and slimmer, with a black crown, black stripes along the head and neck, a yellowish-brown bill and yellowish-brown legs. Grey Heron Ardea cinerea and Black-Headed Heron Ardea melanocephala are smaller and grey, without rufous.
Habitat
Large rivers, lakes, dams, floodplains and broad marshes with open shallow water, also estuaries and mangroves. It hunts standing in the water for large fish of more than a kilogram, sometimes also frogs and young crocodiles. It breeds singly or in small groups, in reeds, on islets or in trees over water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Mainly in the north and east of the region: the Okavango, Chobe and Caprivi, the Zambezi valley and the dams of Zimbabwe, Zambia (Kafue, Luangwa, Bangweulu), Malawi, Mozambique and Angola. In South Africa mainly in the Kruger National Park, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and northern KwaZulu-Natal, scarcer on large inland dams; rare in the Western and Eastern Cape and in Namibia outside the north-east. Beyond the region in sub-Saharan Africa, along the Red Sea and in Iraq and Iran.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search the banks of large rivers and dams, for example on a boat trip on the Chobe or at the dams in Kruger. The silhouette is recognisable from afar; keep your distance, as the bird is shy and flies off with a deep call when approached.
Conservation status
Not threatened and widespread, although it everywhere occurs at low densities. Locally threatened by disturbance along shores, fishing activity and the loss of shallow waters.
Scientific name
Ardea goliath | Cretzschmar, 1829
Cretzschmar described the species in 1829 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Ardea was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Ardea is the Latin word for 'heron'. goliath refers to Goliath, the biblical giant — for the size of the world's largest heron. The specimen the first description was based on came from White Nile, Sudan.