Green Backed Herons, Cormorants, and other Waterbirds in Wimberley, Texas

GREEN-BACKED HERON
Butorides striatus

Walking hand in hand down the Blanco River, floating leisurely on your air mattress, swimming in the cool depths of the Blue Hole or lazily snorkeling down Cypress Creek may result in a noisy surprise.

You might receive a verbal lashing by our local Green-Backed Herons, formerly called the green heron.. "This is my territory - what are you doing churning up the water and disturbing my peace and chasing off my fish!" fusses the fourteen inch tall avian riverfront owner as he flaps his twenty-five inch wide wings over your head. He'll flap downriver just far enough to keep his eyes on you.

Super Showmanship

Green Herons have a flair for the dramatic. When mating they raise their crest. The male erects his neck plumes, swells his throat, stretches his neck and reveals his red mouth lining while calling. Often he hops from foot to foot before the female. What a performance! No wonder she is ready to join him in building a platform nest 30 feet up, usually near or overhanging the water. Two to four eggs are laid, and about thirty-five days later, the young herons fledge.

Butorides virescens
Photograph © Gerald and Buff Corsi
California Academy of Sciences

Green Herons will often crouch and wait patiently for longer that you care to watch. If the fish, insects and aquatic invertebrates don't present themselves, the heron will rake the shallow water causing the prey to come out of hiding.

Phalacrocorax brasilianus
Photograph © 1993, John L. Tveten

What's in a name?

What is a cormorant doing on the Blanco River? Why fishing, of course! Having rather solid bones, wetable feathers and floating low like a submarine enables cormorants to dive thirty feet down into cool deep blue holes in the Blanco after a "big one."

Look for a pair of these black beauties winging their way up our waterways too. Adult birds are black with a slight olive gloss on the back and wings. During breeding season, you may spot short white plumes on the sides of the neck.

These true masters of the water have been known by various names, including the Mexican, Brazilian, bigua, and olivaceous cormorant.

Double Crested Cormorant
Phalacrocorax auritus

This larger relative prefers the Texas coast, but tropical storms or depressions in the Gulf of Mexico occasionally send us these and other salt-water favorites. They don't seem to mind, and will nest in large colonies wherever good fishing can be found, breeding across most of North America. We nearly lost this species when the populations dwindled in the early 1980s. The Neotropic and Double-Crested Cormorants are the only species who normally occur in Texas.

<<Click here for Great Blue Herons (Part One of Waterbirds)

Article by Patsy Glenn
former Co-President of the
Wimberley Birding Society