Japanese Night Heron

Gorsachius goisagi (Temminck, 1836)

≈44 cmLength88 cmWingspan527 gWeight

The adult has a reddish-brown head and neck, a broad bill and yellow skin around the eye.

Busiest months: April · Most records: China, Japan, Malaysia

Vulnerable

How to identify

Field marks

Adult has reddish-brown head and neck feathers
Dense, irregular black markings on the wing coverts
Broad, large bill; yellow skin around the eye

Male, female and young

Juveniles have a blacker head and paler wing feathers than adults.

Where and when it's recorded

Busiest months: April · Most records: China, Japan, Malaysia

Japanese Night Heron has been recorded at 35 of the 8,276 birding hotspots we track, in 5 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

To protect this bird from disturbance, we don't list exact sites.

Countries and regions with the most records

China Japan Malaysia Philippines Christmas Island

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The Japanese night heron (Gorsachius goisagi) is a species of night heron found in East Asia. It breeds in Japan, and winters in the Philippines and Indonesia. It is also seen in the spring and summer in Korea and the Russian Far East.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

Questions

How big is the Japanese Night Heron?

The Japanese Night Heron is about ≈44 cm long, with a wingspan of 88 cm and weighs around 527 g.

Where does the Japanese Night Heron live?

Its breeding range: Palearctic: Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu (central, southern Japan), Jeju (off southern Korean Peninsula) and Taiwan (China). It is most often recorded in China, Japan and Malaysia.