The Story
I photographed this Little Blue Heron (Egretta caerulea) near La Macarena, Meta, Colombia, in February 2021. Males and females look the same, with blue bodies and purple-maroon heads, yellow eyes and greenish legs. It hunts slowly, standing still and waiting rather than chasing prey, and moves more slowly than related species. Its range covers much of the Americas, from the United States to northern South America. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I made this frame with a Canon R5 and the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender, at 1/750 sec, f/16, ISO 6400, −0.5 EV. Birds recorded in the La Macarena reserve up to 1978 already numbered 456 species, about 27 percent of all the birds of Colombia.
©2021 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Little Blue Heron (Egretta caerulea) belongs to the family Ardeidae (Herons, Egrets, and Bitterns) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2025), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List