What’s in a name? The Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea).

Visitors to Seychelles are often a little disappointed by the rather muted colouration of the island’s native birds. People’s perception of tropical birds relates more to brightly coloured Amazonian parrots than it does to the rather undistinguished Seychelles Fody! Of course it is in fact normal for bird species native to isolated small islands to be relatively drab when compared to their continental counterparts - there is a good evolutionary argument for it which I won’t bore you with.
I have recently moved office to a location adjacent to the St Louis river and today whilst parking I saw a grey heron perched on a roof just across the road. It seemed like a good photo-op so I grabbed my little digital camera and took a few shots. As you can see the bird is quite beautifully coloured and the “grey” name doesn’t do it justice. The black eye stripe to the crown, streaks on the neck and black shoulder contrast wonderfully against the white head, pale grey neck and darker grey wings. What is particularly notable in these photos, however, is the reddish hue to the bill and legs which shows that the bird is in breeding colours. Normally the breeding season commences in May-June so this bird appears to be very early into breeding plumage and I will check on this with a colleague to see if this is particularly unusual.
The Grey heron has an interesting story in Seychelles. It apparently was hunted, as a source of food, to extinction in the central archipelago in the 1960s! Rising standards of living since then and the greater availability of poultry etc... (well until this year anyway!) have seen the end of such activities and from the 1980s onwards the central archipelago has been gradually re-colonised. I personally have noted a marked increase in their numbers on the east coast of Mahe over the last 10 years or so –such that now an adult can be seen every 50-80 metres or so along streams and in the mangrove areas, whilst on the mudflats near la promenade I have seen 10 -12 evenly spaced over the flats. I likewise saw four perched together on the tree outside my flat a few months ago.
The future of the birds around Mahe is not assured however with the breeding colony/roost on Hodoul Island threatened by planned developments and who knows (?) if times get much worse, the Grey heron might find itself back in the pot in the coming months!