The Great Blue Heron is our 227th cute Birdorable and the answer to yesterday’s Spot the Birdorable. If you live in North America you’ve probably seen these around near water as they are quite common. It has several nicknames, including Big Cranky, Blue Crane, Long John and Poor Joe.

Did you know that all Herons have two or more patches of powder-down feathers on their breasts? The feathers break up into a fine power when crushed. The birds apply this powder to areas of blood, mud or slime to absorb the mess. Once it has clumped up they can just scrape it off with their feet. They also sprinkle the powder on fish that they just caught to more easily clean off the slime and oil before eating it.

Photo by Gary Woodburn (via Flickr)

If you like this bird see our other egrets and waders. We’ve also added the grey equivalent of this bird: the Grey Heron, which can be found across temperate Europe, Asia and parts of Africa.

Birdorable Great Blue Heron Kid’s T-Shirts	Birdorable Great Blue Heron Round Magnet

The answer to the last ‘Spot the Birdorable’ was Egyptian Vulture, which was first guessed right by Scott on the blog and Gyorgy Szimuly via Facebook.

These downloads will be available until 28 February 2010. Check here for more coloring pages. Subscribe to the Birdorable Blog by RSS feed or by email to get notified when new downloads like this are added.

The answer to the last ‘Spot the Birdorable’ was Ivory-billed Woodpecker, which was first guessed right by Canaduck.

Have you ever seen a Heermann’s Gull? These birds live on the west coast of the United States and Mexico. There are about 150,000 pairs of them and 95% of these nest on the island of Isla Rasa off Baja California.

Audubon calls it one of North America’s most beautiful gulls. Among other gulls in this area, Heermann’s Gulls are easy to identify: breeding adults are dark gray above and light gray below, they have a white head and bright red bill with black tip. They are about the same size as a Ring-billed Gull.

Isla Rasa is included in the Islas del Golfo California Biosphere Reserve. Because so many of these birds nest in one place, the entire species is vulnerable to disturbances there, which include harvesting of eggs by fishermen, industrial development and predation by introduced mammals.

Photo by Mike Baird (via Flickr)

Photo by Mary Angelini (via Flickr)

If you like this cute gull, check out our other Birdorable terns and gulls.

Today we’ve added the Sacred Ibis, a bird that lives in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Europe, where it was introduced. The Sacred Ibis is famous for its role in ancient Egyptian mythology, where it was often mummified as a symbol of the god Thoth, God of wisdom. In art, Thoth was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon. Its name means “He who is like the ibis”.

The bird may have been sacred in Egypt, but in Europe it is having a negative impact. An increasing population of Sacred Ibises in France and southern Europe are devastating breeding colonies of terns and herons. They also compete successfully for nest sites with Cattle Egrets and Little Egrets. In the late 1970s, just twenty Sacred Ibis were originally imported from Kenya to the Branféré Zoological Gardens in southern Brittany, France. A breeding colony was established and spread to neighboring wetlands. A census in 2005 revealed circa 3,000 of the birds.

Photo by Ruslou (via Flickr)

If you like this bird please check out our other Birdorable ibises.

The first new Birdorable bird of 2010 is this Hamerkop, a bird that lives in sub-Saharan Africa. They get their name from their hammer-shaped heads and they are also known as Hammerhead Stork or Anvilhead.

We saw these birds on our trip to the Gambia a couple of years ago and instantly fell in love with these little fellows. They have such a cute head and the large bill makes it look like they’re always smiling. Check out this gorgeous one sporting a nice stick for its nest.

Talking about nests, these birds are famous for them. Their huge nests, often built in the fork of a tree, can grow to over 5 feet (1.5 meters) across and made with over 10,000 sticks! That’s one busy bird! A Hamerkop’s nest is strong enough to support a man’s weight. The birds like to decorate the outside of their nest with bright-colored objects that they find in the area. We saw one of these large nests, which you can see in the following picture.

If you like our Hamerkop check out our other African birds. Another favorite of ours from our trip to the Gambia was the Egyptian Plover.

Birdorable Hamerkop Ladies Fitted Long Sleeve T-Shirt	Birdorable Hamerkop Infant T-Shirt

Shown here is our Basic American Apparel T-Shirt which is made in the USA.

We’ve got quite a few European birds here at Birdorable, including several of the Dutch favorites. Here are a few of them. The Dutch names are listed below.

#1 Merel (Blackbird)
#4 Roodborst (Robin)
#5 Winterkoning (Winter Wren)
#10 Putter (European Goldfinch)
#15 Vink (Chaffinch)
#21 Kievit (Northern Lapwing)
#26 Pimpelmees (Blue Tit)
#56 IJsvogel (Common Kingfisher)

Quiz for fun: In the following picture 95 different Birdorable birds make up the year “2010″. Only one species is shown twice. Can you find it? Click the picture to embiggen.