Malagasy Pond Heron

Appearance

There is not a large variation in weight between the sexes as they are quite similar in bone body structure. Feather, eye, and bill colour are determined by life stage (chick, juvenile, and adult) and reproductive status. The adults appearance can be split into the non-breeding plumage and the breeding stage. When the species is not breeding, the crown and the posterior are a colour mixture of buff and black with brown prominent over the other parts of the body.

Malagasy pond herons grow to 45–50 cm (18–20 in) in height and anywhere from 250–350 g (9–12 oz) in weight.

Range and habitat

During the non-breeding season, they migrate to eastern mainland Africa, in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. In Madagascar, some of the locations where commonly observed include Lake Alarobia and Tsimbazaza Park (both near Antananarivo), wetlands around Ampijoroa and at Berenty. As a result, their estimated area of occurrence is 1,050,000 km2 (410,000 sq mi).

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

One of the key behavioural habits of the Malagasy pond heron is its yearly migratory pattern. It migrates from Madagascar to the eastern mainland of Africa in May and journeys back to its breeding range in October.

Nesting tends to be done along the coast and foraging for food is performed well inland, away from the nests. In fact, the closest that an individual heron will get to another apart from breeding is during roosting in their nests. The breeding of the Malagasy pond heron is colonial, meaning that a large congregation occurs at a particular location for mating.

In crisis

As of 2021, the population is estimated to number between 1,000 – 2,500 adults and the species is considered endangered. The main threat for survival of this species is the continual loss of habitat due to the clearing, drainage, and conversion of their wetland environments to rice fields. As a result, their population has declined dramatically over the last 50 years.

An equally dangerous threat to their survival is competition with the squacco heron, that is spreading vigorously and seems to be more adaptable to man-made structures and icons that encroach on their habitat. In 1988, this species was classified as near threatened according to IUCN's red list, but continued pressure on the population resulted in a move to the vulnerable category in 2000.

Malagasy Pond Heron is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Malagasy Pond Heron, Wikidata item Q498169. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.