PURPLE HERON

The Croatian Post has issued four commemorative postage stamps with the motif of the Purple Heron in cooperation with the Worldwide Fund for Nature – WWF, and the sign of the panda - the logotype WWF, is printed on the stamps with the permission of the registered owner of the protected sign. Motif: Purple Heron (Ardea purpurea) in various positions The Purple Heron (Ardea purpurea Linn. 1766), also called by various local names referring to its colour as the red, dark, snaky, sooty, measly heron, belongs to waterfowl or wading birds of the Croatian ornithological fauna. It is a migratory bird that arrives in our region at the end of March and leaves it in August, September, sometimes even later. Well-known colonies of these herons can be found in the natural reserves of Kopački Rit, Krapje Djol and Jelas Polje in Croatia, the lakes Balaton and Velence in Hungary, Trebon in the Czech Republic, and they can also be found on several locations in Slovakia, near the Neusiedler Lake in Austria, in Friesland and Utrecht in the Netherlands, in the Po river basin in Italy, in Camargue, France, the Danube Delta in Romania, and further on in south, central and northern Africa, Portugal, Spain, the southern parts of Russia, in Asia Minor and northern Iran. The Purple Heron is protected by law in most European countries. It is protected by numerous international conventions: the Bonn Convention (1975 and Bern Convention (1976), followed by the Agreement on the protection of African-Eurasian migratory wading birds (AEWA – 1995), the Convention on the protection of wetland habitats from Ramsar (1971), and in Croatia the bird is protected by the Act on the protection of nature from the year 2003 and the Regulation on the protection of various bird species from the year 1995. The Purple Heron belongs to the group of larger birds. It is 79 cm in length, its spread out wings reach up to 135 cm, and it weighs round 1 kilogram. Its body is slender, with long legs and a long tapering bill and with chestnut feathers. The front and crown of the head, together with the decorative feathers are black, as are the breast and underbody, and parts of the shoulders and breast are also darker. There are black facial stripes stretching from the bill down to the breast, and the feathers of the neck and the line down the face are chestnut brown. The back with the wings and the rump are bluish-grey. The shoulders are covered with red-buff and coloured feathers that are the bird’s decoration. The bird has yellow eyes and greenish-yellow legs. Its feet are larger than in the Grey Heron it resembles. The likeness is more distinctive in flight, but they differ in the more expressed warping of the long neck, where the warping angle, the so called «S» of the neck, is noticeably sharper than in the Grey Heron. In mid-air the heron has a more high-pitched cry than the Grey Heron, and at the time of nesting in the colonies of herons, there is a very intense crying going on day and night. The Purple Heron lives in wetland and swamps of plant communities where there is a predominance of common reed (Phragmites australis), common club-rush (Schoenoplectus lacustris), various kinds of bulrushes (Typha), sedge (Carex) and other sorts that make a phytocoenosis of the common reed and a small crab (Scirpo – Phragmitetum W.Koch 1926). Though the reeds are the most frequent place for the dwelling and nesting of the European population, we can also find them in other habitats with a different vegetational overgrowth. They also nest in low growth bush-like alder trees, in willow copses (like in Krapje Djol in the Nature Park Lonjsko Polje). It is interesting to note that in Lonjsko Polje nests were found on common oak trees and hawthorn bushes, and they nest even on trees up to 25 m in height. After their ritual mating, like in the Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea Linn. 1758), the couple builds their nest using simple building material consisting of sedge leaf blades, common reed and the like that can be found in the surrounding area. In the nest 4 to 5 bluish-greenish eggs can be found, and the incubation lasts 25 to 30 days. The hatched young birds are fledglings that become ready to leave the nest in 7 to 8 weeks. Herons are caring parents, regularly feed their fledglings and protect them from the blazing sun and enemies. They build their nests in «pure» or mixed colonies with other heron species: the Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea), Great White Egret (Egretta alba L. 1758), Squacco Heron (Ardeola ralloides Scopol. 1769), Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax L. 1758), even with the Spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia L. 1758).