...breeding adult plumage.
The Great Blue Heron is the largest heron in North America. Often seen standing silently along inland rivers or lakeshores, or flying high overhead, with slow wingbeats, its head hunched back onto its shoulders. Highly adaptable, it thrives around all kinds of waters from subtropical mangrove swamps to desert rivers to the coastline of southern Alaska. With its variable diet it is able to spend the winter farther north than most herons, even in areas where most waters freeze.
Highly variable and adaptable, Great Blue Herons eat mostly fish, but also frogs, salamanders, turtles, snakes, insects, rodents, birds. Has been seen stalking voles and gophers in fields, capturing rails at edge of marsh, eating many species of small water-birds.
Despite their impressive size, Great Blue Herons weigh only 5 to 6 pounds thanks in part to their hollow bones—a feature all birds share.
Great Blue Herons can hunt day and night thanks to a high percentage of rod-type photo-receptors in their eyes that improve their night vision.
The oldest recorded Great Blue Heron was found in Texas when it was at least 24 years, 6 months old.
(Audubon Guide to North American Birds)
400mm + TC 1.4, 1/1250 @ f/9.0, ISO 1000)
Edited to Taste
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