The Great Blue Heron isn’t really blue, but more of a blue-gray on their back and a black, gray, and white striped underside. This-paired with its gigantic wingspan make it a distinctive silhouette in the sky that’s easy to identify for even first-time birdwatchers. The Great Egret also has a direct flight, meaning it flies in a straight and level path while continuously flapping their powerful and large wings, which it’s entirely reliant on for flight. Their most distinctive characteristic is that unlike most heron species, the Great Egret flies with its neck retracted. Like most egrets, they also have gigantic wings that are nearly two times the size of its body. They’re most well known for the beautiful feather plume they develop during the breeding season, and were almost hunted to extinction for them. The Great Egret has breeding populations throughout the United States, but is most commonly seen around fresh and salt water marshes, marshy ponds, and tidal flats along the Atlantic coastline. Nonetheless, there’s hope yet for this bird as they’re one of the easiest for biologists to incubate in captivity – they lay two eggs but will only raise one, leaving the second “backup” egg for scientists to remove and artificially hatch. This leads them to accidentally collide with power lines on their migration, which is the leading cause of death for adult Whooping Cranes. They make for great fliers, thanks to their large wings, but they don’t have the best eyesight. It’s highly opportunistic and will eat frogs, fish, mollusks, small mammals, and crustaceans. This species of bird prefers grassy plains interspersed with marshes and ponds. It’s the tallest bird of the New World, with males standing nearly 5 feet tall with a truly gigantic wingspan of 7.5 feet – nearly 1.5 times their height! There’s currently only one population that still exists in the wild, and it bounces between breeding grounds in northern Canada and wintering grounds on the Texas coast. The Whooping Crane used to be abundant and had a traditional range of all of North America. Whooping Crane image: Brian Ralphs | Flickr | CC 2.0 To help us better appreciate these gorgeous birds here’s a list of 22 birds with long wingspans, a few of which you may even get to see in your own backyard. Long wings are especially helpful for migrating and soaring birds, as they allow them to stay up longer and with less effort on thermal drafts. They’ve fascinated people for hundreds of years, and none more so than those with especially long wings that make for a very distinctive outline. Birds may have the most recognizable silhouettes in the sky, and there’s no question why.

Bird with the largest wingspan