''Butorides'' is a genus of small herons. It contains three similar species, the green heron or green-backed heron, ''Butorides virescens'', the lava heron (''Butorides sundevalli''), and the

striated heron The striated heron (''Butorides striata'') also known as mangrove heron, little green heron or green-backed heron, is a small heron, about 44 cm tall. Striated herons are mostly sedentary and noted for some interesting behavioral traits. The ...

, ''Butorides striatus''. A

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

species, ''Butorides validipes'', is known from the Early Pleistocene of

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in the United States. ''Butorides'' is from

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...

''Butor'' "bittern" and

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''-oides'', "resembling". Adults of both extant species are about long, and have a blue-black back and wings, a black cap and short yellow legs. Juveniles are browner above and streaked below, and have greenish-yellow legs. The species have different underpart colours, chestnut with a white line down the front in green heron, and white or grey in striated. Both breed in small wetlands on a platform of sticks often in shrubs or trees, sometimes on the ground. The female lays three to five

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

s. Both parents incubate for about 20 days until hatching, and feed the young birds which take a further three weeks to fledge. ''Butorides'' herons stand still at the water's edge and wait to ambush prey. They mainly eat small

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of ...

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" ''Triadobatrachus'' is ...

s and aquatic

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s. They sometimes drop food on the water's surface to attract fish.

Taxonomy and range

The ''Butorides'' herons were formerly considered one species, but are now normally split as above, with the green heron breeding in eastern North America,

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, the

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and the

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coast of

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and the United States, and striated heron in the Old World tropics from west

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to Japan, and in

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. Birds in central

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with buff necks have been considered to be hybrids between the two species, but the occurrence of similar birds beyond the range of migratory green herons means that there is still doubt about the species' limits of the ''Butorides'' herons.

References

* ''A guide to the birds of Costa Rica'' (1989), by F. Gary Stiles and Alexander Frank Skutch Bird genera Herons Extant Pleistocene first appearances Taxa named by Edward Blyth {{Pelecaniformes-stub