EARTH · GLOBAL BIRD MAP · EUROPE
Grey Heron
Ardea cinerea. The tall grey wading heron of Eurasian and African waterways, the Old-World counterpart of the Great Blue. Pooled openly through GBIF, the Grey Heron has been recorded 5,560,099 times across 185 countries — most often in Sweden, France and United Kingdom. The map above glows where those records cluster. Remember the map shows where it’s been recorded, which follows observers too — not its exact range or how many there are.
Counts are GBIF occurrence records published under CC0 or CC-BY only (the openly-reusable subset), so they are a floor, not the full holding — and they track observer effort, not just the bird.
Where it’s recorded most
The countries contributing the most openly-licensed records of the Grey Heron. This leans toward nations with many active birdwatchers and open data — it is a map of records, not of where the bird is most abundant.
How to read this map
Each bright cell is a cluster of times someone recorded a Grey Heronand shared it openly — a birder’s checklist, a photo, a museum specimen. It’s a real trace of the bird’s presence, but not a range map: the glow also follows where people look, so well-birded regions shine and quiet ones fade even if the bird is there. The Grey Heronis broadly resident, so its records tend to stay within its home region — concentrated where observers are, not spread by migration. There is no LIVE badge: the figures are a snapshot dated 20 Jul 2026.