The striated heron is small with a sturdy bill. It has some brown feathers on its throat and breast. The bird is shy and flies away on approach, often uttering a raw call. It is very common in the coastal plains, also in Paramaribo. The bird finds its food along the waterside where there is dense vegetation: in marshes, along trenches, in ricefields, between the mangrove trees and much less often along kreeks in the interior. It spends its day solitary, waiting a long time with a curved neck and then seize a fish or crab by shooting forwards with its bill. The pictures above were made by Erik Toorman, June 2003 and by Steven Wytema (one of a very brown bird, a bit like the North American birds and the other looks a young bird as it has many stripes) and below by Arie Spaans at Weg naar Zee, Suriname. Then follow two pictures of a very young bird, a day before it flew away from its nest tree in Elisabethshof in Paramaribo, made by R. Ribot.
Each small square indicates the observation of at least one (group) of these birds, the medium ones at least 4 observations on different days and the largest ones 10 or more. The color of each square indicates: blue for coastal area, yellow for savanna and red for rainforest. Below two photos made by Dominiek Plouvier, Suriname
| Distribution in Suriname (explanation) | |
| Coastal area |  |
| Savanna |  |
| Forests | |
| Mountain forests |  |
| Sipalawini savanna | |
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More pictures of herons and other waterbirds in Suriname