Green heron
| Green heron Temporal range: | |
|---|---|
| Green heron have iridescent green feathers on their wings | |
| Call | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Pelecaniformes |
| Family: | Ardeidae |
| Genus: | Butorides |
| Species: | B. virescens |
| Binomial name | |
| Butorides virescens | |
| Range of B. virescens Breeding range Year-round range Wintering range | |
| Synonyms | |
|
Ardea virescens Linnaeus, 1758 | |
The green heron (Butorides virescens) is a small heron of North and Central America. Butorides is from Middle English butor "bittern" and Ancient Greek -oides, "resembling", and virescens is Latin for "greenish".
It was long considered conspecific with its sister species the striated heron (Butorides striata), and together they were called "green-backed heron". Birds of the nominate subspecies (no matter which taxonomic arrangement is preferred) are extremely rare vagrants to western Europe—for example, a sighting in Pembrokeshire in 2018 was only the second recorded sighting in Wales; individuals from the Pacific coast of North America may similarly stray as far as Hawaii.
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