Butorides striata
Silhouette: Andy Wilson · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~80% in a week >90%
The striated heron (Butorides striata) also known as mangrove heron or little green heron, is a small heron, about 44 cm tall. It is mostly sedentary and noted for some interesting behavioural traits. The breeding habitat is in South America and the Caribbean. The striated heron was formerly considered to be conspecific with the little heron that is found in the Old World tropics from west Africa to Japan and Australia.
The striated heron was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with the other herons in the genus Ardea and coined the binomial name Ardea striata. Linnaeus specified the locality as Suriname. The specific epithet is from Latin striatus meaning "striated". The striated heron is now one of four closely related species placed in the genus Butorides that was described in 1852 by the English zoologist Edward Blyth.
This bird was long considered to be conspecific with the closely related North American species, the green heron, which is now usually separated as Butorides virescens, as well as the lava heron of the Galápagos Islands (now Butorides sundevalli, but often included... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Salvador | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 2 | Antananarivo | 🇲🇬 Madagascar | |
| 3 | Fortaleza | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 4 | Denpasar | 🇮🇩 Indonesia | |
| 5 | Recife | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 6 | Ouagadougou | 🇧🇫 Burkina Faso | |
| 7 | Jinhua | 🇨🇳 China | |
| 8 | Jakarta | 🇮🇩 Indonesia | |
| 9 | Makassar | 🇮🇩 Indonesia | |
| 10 | Zanzibar City | 🇹🇿 Tanzania |
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Barcelona Zoo | 🇪🇸 Spain | |
| 2 | Parque Zoobotânico Arruda Câmara (BICA) | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 3 | Aquarama Barcelona | 🇪🇸 Spain | |
| 4 | L'Oceanogràfic | 🇪🇸 Spain | |
| 5 | Mangal das Garças | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 6 | Cali Zoo | 🇨🇴 Colombia |
Likely
About 40% of wildlife watchers report a Striated Heron sighting in Lower Zambezi National Park on a given day, based on 133 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 46th most-seen of the 241 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 80%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
August
In that month about 60% of wildlife watchers report a Striated Heron in Lower Zambezi National Park on a given day, against about 30% in January and April–May, the lowest months. That is one of Lower Zambezi National Park's driest months, with almost no rain against 290 mm in January. February and March have too few records to rate.
Between 7 and 10 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Striated Heron sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
8th of 108
Of the 108 parks where we can rate Striated Heron sightings, Lower Zambezi National Park ranks 8th at about 40%. The best odds are in Parque Estadual Encontro das Águas (Brazil, about 70%), Caroni Swamp (Trinidad and Tobago, about 60%) and Sundarbans National Park (India, about 60%). All parks ranked.
Same family: Ardeidae
The closest relatives of the Striated Heron that you can see in Lower Zambezi National Park (family Ardeidae, Herons, Egrets, and Bitterns) are Great Egret (about 60%), Cattle Egret (about 60%) and Goliath Heron (about 50%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Striated Heron is recorded against all the birds logged in Lower Zambezi National Park (133 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
