Least Bittern - BirdForum Opus

Photo © by Marcel Gauthier
Lacolle, Quebec, Canada, June 2005

Botaurus exilis

Ixobrychus exilis

Identification

Chick, subspecies exilis
Photo © by Stanley Jones
Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, Chambers County, Texas, USA, July 2018

28–36 cm (11-15 in)
Adult male

Blackish cap
Buff to tawny-chestnut face and neck-sides
White chin, throat and underparts, with buff-brown streaks

Distribution

North and South America.
Breeds in much of the eastern and southern USA and extreme south-east Canada. Scarce and local in the west breeding from southern Oregon to California. Breeds widely through Mexico and Central America and in South America from Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad and the Guianas to southern Brazil and Uruguay. Also occurs in a narrow coastal belt of Peru.

Northern birds are migratory and winter in the southern USA, Mexico and the West Indies.

Recorded as a vagrant once in Iceland ( on Heimaey in the Westmann Islands in September 1970) and 5 times in the Azores, all September-November, and also an unconfirmed report from Britain.

Taxonomy

Subspecies

Photo © by Kadawe
Massachusetts, 30 May 2020

Six subspecies are recognised^[1]:

B.e. exilis:

North America

B.e. pullus:

(darker above) on the Sonora and Sinaloa coast of Mexico

B.e. bogotensis:

(richly-coloured underparts and blacker legs) in central Colombia

B.e. erythromelas:

(more rufous above) over most of South American range

B.e. limoncochae

eastern Ecuador; records from northeastern Peru (Loreto) presumably also this subspecies

B.e. peruvianus:

(duller) on the coast of Peru

Habitat

Marshy areas with dense vegetation, sometimes brackish waters.

Behaviour

Diet

Their diet consists of small fish and aquatic insects, also dragonflies and grasshoppers.

References

Clements, J. F., P. C. Rasmussen, T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, A. Spencer, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, M. Smith, and C. L. Wood. 2024. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2024. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive (retrieved June 2014)

List of references

Recommended Citation

BirdForum Opus contributors. (2025) Least Bittern. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 19 April 2025 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Least_Bittern

External Links

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