Posted in Birds, Humor, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Canon 50D, Canon 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens, crawfish, crayfish, Great Blue Heron, Huntley Meadows Park on June 16, 2014| 10 Comments »
If I want to eat a lobster, I need lots of tools (and a bib). This Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) at my local marsh had to try a different technique and seemed to be trying to crack the crayfish’s shell with its bill (or was hoping the crayfish would simply crawl down its throat).
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Canon 50D, Canon 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens, crayfish, Great Blue Heron, Huntley Meadows Park on June 16, 2014| 6 Comments »
Getting to the tastiest parts of crabs and lobsters is an awful lot of work, even when you have the proper implements. Imagine how tough it was for this Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) to figure out what to do with this crayfish that it caught at my local marsh.
Great Blue Herons generally swallow the frogs and fish that they catch after just a few adjustments to get it to slide down the throat, but the heron seemed to spend a long time with this catch, moving it back and forth in its bill. I was a bit too far away to tell if the heron eventually swallowed the crayfish whole or somehow was able to crack the shell. In either case, I’m impressed with the digestive system of this beautiful bird.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, tagged Ardea herodias, Canon 55-250mm zoom lens, Canon Rebel XT, crayfish, Great Blue Heron, heron, Huntley Meadows Park on July 26, 2013| 12 Comments »
I enjoy watching Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) fishing—they seem so patient and so focused—and observed one recently in the beaver pond at my local marsh.
I was a little surprised to see the heron at that location, because the water level in the pond has dropped as the weather has gotten hotter and some areas are even exposed. As the heron plunged his bill into the shallow water, I expected him to pull out a frog or perhaps a small fish. I was too far away to tell for sure what he had caught, but I kept shooting. When I looked at the images, it looks like he may have caught a crayfish, but I am not really sure. Do herons even eat crayfish? I took the photos in the middle of the day, so the colors are washed out a bit, but some more knowledgeable reader may still be able to tell me for sure if it is a crayfish in the heron’s mouth. (You can get a higher resolution view if you click on the image.)
The second photo was taken before the heron began fishing and gives you an idea of how shallow the water is in the beaver pond. In post processing, I made a number of tweaks to the image to try to increase the contrast and saturation of the colors and may have gone over the top a little. What do you think?
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 