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The UK Bird Atlas

Green Heron (Butorides virescens)Where and when to see it in the UK

Scarce migrant · reporting peaks May · Herons, Egrets, and Bitterns · BOU category A

Records to 2026-08-16 · build 2026-08-31

Green Heron (Butorides virescens)
Peter Wallack, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Too few records to rate squares by month. Each marked square has at least one record; the table below gives the count and years.

Green Heron: relative reporting rate by 10 km square, September

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (grid squares, place names from OS Open Names). Northern Ireland place names: OSNI Open Data, OGL v3.0. County and country boundaries: Office for National Statistics, Open Government Licence v3.0. Coastline: Natural Earth. Bird records from the data partners listed here.

Green Heron has been recorded in 10 of the 2,971 10 km squares covering UK land (0%) in records to 2026. Scarce migrant in the UK. Reporting peaks in May.

Conservation status: Not Evaluated (IUCN Red List, NE)
View on the IUCN Red List

Records by 10 km square

SquareWhereRecordsYearsVerified
NO51Fife, Scotland22025unverified
SN11Pembrokeshire, Wales312018unverified
SW94Cornwall, England312010unverified
SX04Cornwall, England22010unverified
TR13Kent, England332008unverified
TR03Kent, England182008unverified
SH58Isle of Anglesey, Wales462005unverified
SH47Isle of Anglesey, Wales12005unverified
SE90North Lincolnshire, England572001unverified
SE80North Lincolnshire, England12001unverified

Spotted an error in a square? Report it and it goes into the review queue. Read the methodology for how classes, flags and sensitive-species rules work. Data to 2026.