Glen Davidson said: The beaks of a thousand fish nightmares.
Great Blues also eat frogs, lizards, (baby) turtles and even mice.
JimboK · 27 May 2013
Nice close-up picture of not one, but two of them! These birds use to take wing before you could get anywhere near them. Today it seems they are much more tolerant of humans.
Matt Young · 27 May 2013
The birds were relatively distant -- maybe 20 or 30 m -- but they tolerated us for longer than we tolerated them. The picture was taken with the equivalent of a 500-mm lens and cropped by a factor of perhaps 2.
Does anyone happen to know whether they are a pair?
Paul Burnett · 27 May 2013
Matt Young said: Does anyone happen to know whether they are a pair?
Great Blue Herons are not sexually dimorphic, but females are a bit smaller - the one on the right may be a female, so it may be a pair. What time of year was the picture taken?
Matt Young · 27 May 2013
What time of year was the picture taken?
Last week, so: mid-May.
Joe Felsenstein · 27 May 2013
JimboK said:
Nice close-up picture of not one, but two of them! These birds use to take wing before you could get anywhere near them. Today it seems they are much more tolerant of humans.
There's a rookery of them each summer at the tops of some fir trees (about 20m up) which stand next to a busy sidewalk on the University of Washington campus. Talk about tolerant of humans ...
Sinjari · 27 May 2013
Matt Young said:
What time of year was the picture taken?
Last week, so: mid-May.
Their breeding seasons extends from March through May (just their Northern range), and from what I learned after a cursory Google search, there does appear to be a heronry in Boulder county, Colorado.
KlausH · 28 May 2013
How big are these things? Also, is this the normal color; they look more grey than blue in the picture? During a camping trip in Michigan, at Black Lake, my family saw a heron or crane that actually was blue, and it was at least 6 feet tall.
EvoDevo · 28 May 2013
Nice pictures, Young. The males are apparently 54 inches.
EvoDevo · 28 May 2013
Actually, between 52-54 inches.
Richard B. Hoppe · 28 May 2013
There are two heron rookeries (heronries?) near me, one with seven occupied nests and one with three. Seeing seven of those giants standing on their huge nests high in sycamores is an imposing sight.
Carl Drews · 28 May 2013
And they are incredibly graceful when they fly.
EvoDevo · 29 May 2013
They often stay near water, which might explain why you spotted them.
https://me.yahoo.com/a/9pbBf2Z7hpjo7Sgu.05hwckOTMhY0rCr#962ee · 30 May 2013
These herons were somewhat rare on the Tn. river 3 decades ago. One of my first few days as a commercial diver (harvester of freshwater mussels) I saw one of these gangly looking birds and asked the guy I was working with what it was called. His reply was "a bad ugly bird". I have affectionately referred to them thus since.
What a difference 30 years makes. These birds are a common sight now, and there are places where they roost with many in the same tree. Quite a sight. They will also be seen often in ponds, and flying overhead to who knows where.
I don't post here a lot, this is Shelldigger. Silly me cant remember my pw, and have a new e-mail address so pw recovery wont work. For some reason Word Press claims I do not own my own identity, I guess the Yahoo sign in will have to work till I figure something else out.
John Harshman · 30 May 2013
KlausH said:
How big are these things? Also, is this the normal color; they look more grey than blue in the picture? During a camping trip in Michigan, at Black Lake, my family saw a heron or crane that actually was blue, and it was at least 6 feet tall.
One learns to discount some percentage of information in order to make an identification. No bird fits all your description. There is no heron that makes it to 6 feet tall, though the African goliath heron comes closer than any American bird. I think you saw a little blue heron and are mistaken about the size. Great blue herons are the biggest American herons. It's vaguely possible you could have seen a whooping crane in migration, though I seriously doubt it, and anyway they're white. Sandhill cranes are smaller and gray.
KlausH · 3 June 2013
John Harshman said:
KlausH said:
How big are these things? Also, is this the normal color; they look more grey than blue in the picture? During a camping trip in Michigan, at Black Lake, my family saw a heron or crane that actually was blue, and it was at least 6 feet tall.
One learns to discount some percentage of information in order to make an identification. No bird fits all your description. There is no heron that makes it to 6 feet tall, though the African goliath heron comes closer than any American bird. I think you saw a little blue heron and are mistaken about the size. Great blue herons are the biggest American herons. It's vaguely possible you could have seen a whooping crane in migration, though I seriously doubt it, and anyway they're white. Sandhill cranes are smaller and gray.
No, it was over 6 feet tall and bright blue. We paddled the canoe over to where it was and measured the cat tails at almost 6 feet, and the bird was taller than them. We had a tape measure to check fish. It was by far the tallest bird I had ever seen, short of an ostrich. I have seen Caracaras and Golden Eagles that were bigger overall, but nothing taller in the wild, in the US. It was at the North end of Black Lake, in Michigan. There are many cranes, herons, kingfishers, and egrets in Texas, where I live, and I know what they look like. The bird we saw looked the the herons in the picture, but was BLUE, not grey, and at least 6 feet tall.
17 Comments
https://me.yahoo.com/a/JxVN0eQFqtmgoY7wC1cZM44ET_iAanxHQmLgYgX_Zhn8#57cad · 27 May 2013
The beaks of a thousand fish nightmares.
Glen Davidson
Paul Burnett · 27 May 2013
JimboK · 27 May 2013
Nice close-up picture of not one, but two of them! These birds use to take wing before you could get anywhere near them. Today it seems they are much more tolerant of humans.
Matt Young · 27 May 2013
The birds were relatively distant -- maybe 20 or 30 m -- but they tolerated us for longer than we tolerated them. The picture was taken with the equivalent of a 500-mm lens and cropped by a factor of perhaps 2.
Does anyone happen to know whether they are a pair?
Paul Burnett · 27 May 2013
Matt Young · 27 May 2013
Joe Felsenstein · 27 May 2013
Sinjari · 27 May 2013
KlausH · 28 May 2013
How big are these things? Also, is this the normal color; they look more grey than blue in the picture? During a camping trip in Michigan, at Black Lake, my family saw a heron or crane that actually was blue, and it was at least 6 feet tall.
EvoDevo · 28 May 2013
Nice pictures, Young. The males are apparently 54 inches.
EvoDevo · 28 May 2013
Actually, between 52-54 inches.
Richard B. Hoppe · 28 May 2013
There are two heron rookeries (heronries?) near me, one with seven occupied nests and one with three. Seeing seven of those giants standing on their huge nests high in sycamores is an imposing sight.
Carl Drews · 28 May 2013
And they are incredibly graceful when they fly.
EvoDevo · 29 May 2013
They often stay near water, which might explain why you spotted them.
https://me.yahoo.com/a/9pbBf2Z7hpjo7Sgu.05hwckOTMhY0rCr#962ee · 30 May 2013
These herons were somewhat rare on the Tn. river 3 decades ago. One of my first few days as a commercial diver (harvester of freshwater mussels) I saw one of these gangly looking birds and asked the guy I was working with what it was called. His reply was "a bad ugly bird". I have affectionately referred to them thus since.
What a difference 30 years makes. These birds are a common sight now, and there are places where they roost with many in the same tree. Quite a sight. They will also be seen often in ponds, and flying overhead to who knows where.
I don't post here a lot, this is Shelldigger. Silly me cant remember my pw, and have a new e-mail address so pw recovery wont work. For some reason Word Press claims I do not own my own identity, I guess the Yahoo sign in will have to work till I figure something else out.
John Harshman · 30 May 2013
KlausH · 3 June 2013