A large heron that waits in shallow water to catch fish and other prey. In flight it draws its long neck back toward the body.
The wings and back are grey. Adults have a white head with long black crest feathers, while juveniles keep a grey crown through their first winter. The bill is yellow for most of the year and becomes orange-tinted in the breeding season.
Some grey herons travel long distances as the seasons change. A bird may winter at Dongting Lake in China, breed in the Russian Far East and then move to another area after breeding. Different places can support different parts of its annual life.
In March 2014, researchers fitted a small tracking device to one adult captured at Dongting Lake and followed it through 2015. Its breeding area was in Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Oblast, followed by a post-breeding stay near Jiamusi in China. The bird returned to the same wintering, breeding and post-breeding areas in both years.
Its destinations were similar, but the journeys differed. Spring migration covered about 2,850 kilometres in 134 hours in 2014 and about 2,710 kilometres in 63 hours the following year. The bird travelled during both daylight and darkness in spring. The authors suggested that routes, wind and other weather conditions might help explain the difference in speed.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
BTO continues the Heronries Census, begun in 1928. Its report on the 2025 survey estimated about 9,300 apparently occupied grey heron nests across all Census sites. Numbers remained below the roughly 13,000 estimated in the early 2000s, and the report described the failure to recover after severe-winter declines as unexplained. Volunteers’ continued nest counts make it possible to track this long-term change.