Grey Heron

Ardea cinerea Linnaeus, 1758

Name in other languages

A common Palearctic species, the Grey Heron inhabits the southern parts of Siberia. In Central Siberia the numbers are low and continue to decrease rapidly. In earlier times, it was a common breeder around bodies of water in the steppes and forest-steppes of Khakasia as well as on lakes in the Chulym forest-steppe and in the Us depression (Sushkin 1914). Some vagrants have been found in the Sayan Mountains, and to the north it occurs very rarely up to the latitude of Krasnoyarsk (Yudin 1952). In the sixties, the species probably nested in the southern taiga of the upper Ket' River west of the Yenisey at 58°15' N (Moskvitin et al. 1977). Syroechkovski observed Grey Herons on many occasions in Evenkian mid taiga on the Podkamennaya Tunguska River near Vanavara (60°20' N) in 1958. There are three seperate records of Grey Herons along the Yenisey: Bursky found one in the Yenisey floodplain near Mirnoye (62°15' N) on June 19, 1982. Sheynov found another in June 1983 near Bakhta, and the other was discovered by Anzigitova on June 3, 1973, near Alinskoye (63°20' N). Near the eastern borders of Central Siberia in the Viluy River basin, the Grey Heron has colonized areas to the west and north and has already been seen just below 64° N (Andreev 1974).

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