{"id":10843,"date":"2012-12-27T12:21:33","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T19:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=10843"},"modified":"2012-12-27T12:41:44","modified_gmt":"2012-12-27T19:41:44","slug":"great-blue-herons-in-snow-and-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/27\/great-blue-herons-in-snow-and-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Blue Herons On Snow and Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christmas Morning at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge was nothing short of spectacular.\u00a0 We had great light,\u00a0 wonderfully clear blue skies\u00a0and lots of birds.\u00a0 And it was cold – as low as 6 degrees F.\u00a0 Perfect!<\/p>\n

On this trip (which included the Promontory Point area)\u00a0we\u00a0saw a plethora of raptors – Bald and Golden Eagles, Red-tailed Hawks, Rough-legged Hawks, American Kestrels, Short-eared Owls, a Prairie Falcon and one Barn Owl hunting in daylight because of the cold.<\/p>\n

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\"bear<\/p>\n

And I’ve never seen as many Great Blue Herons in one relatively\u00a0small area as I did on that morning.\u00a0 Just before I stopped to take this photo there\u00a0were over 100 of them on the ice of the canal to the\u00a0right and along the far bank in less than 1\/3 mile – which led to a topic of conversation.\u00a0 Mia is from Florida and we discussed how seeing Great Blue Herons on snow and ice seems incongruous to many folks from warmer climates.\u00a0 That conversation was the inspiration for\u00a0this post.<\/p>\n

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\"great<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, natural light\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As is typical for western herons, these birds were difficult to approach (in some areas like Florida one can almost walk up and touch them at times).\u00a0 This juvenile was fishing in a patch of flowing water surrounded by ice and snow.<\/p>\n

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\"greata<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, natural light <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Then the same bird flew off and then came back to land within a few feet of where it had been fishing – almost like it was reluctant to leave a productive fishing spot.<\/p>\n

The rest of the images in this post are older shots that show the conditions these birds actually deal with during winter around here.<\/p>\n

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\"greeat<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/400, f\/9, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc,\u00a0natural light <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Often ice covers most of the big ponds, with open areas wherever the water’s flowing a little.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When that happens the herons\u00a0sometimes fish from the ice edges.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/640, f\/6.3, ISO 160, 500 f\/4, natural light <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

When it’s colder there’s normally only small areas of open water near the bridges where the water is flowing fastest.\u00a0 On this day\u00a0this was just about the last spot that wasn’t frozen and this heron staked out its fishing spot.\u00a0 It was cloudy with some fog and very cold.\u00a0 You can see ice hanging off the feathers of the bird’s breast.<\/p>\n

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\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc,\u00a0natural light <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The fishing can be good in these small open areas.\u00a0 As you can see, other birds congregate there too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/400, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc,\u00a0natural light <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Warmer days bring a respite on the ice.\u00a0\u00a0 Here the sun has opened\u00a0up a larger\u00a0patch of water and the heron seems to be enjoying the relative warmth.\u00a0 Notice the snow in the foreground and ice\u00a0behind the bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc,\u00a0natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

On the most frigid days there’s nothing but ice and snow with no open water.\u00a0 Then the herons change their tactics and go hunting for voles, which is precisely what this bird is doing.\u00a0 They’re very good at it too.\u00a0 They seem to stab the voles with their pointed beak rather than grasping them because it’s a very bloody affair.<\/p>\n

I thought that some of you “southerners” might be interested in seeing how our herons cope in the cold.\u00a0 They seem not to mind too much because many of them remain here year round.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: You may have noticed that my site has been down for much of the morning.\u00a0\u00a0 Network Solutions\u00a0is having DOS (Denial of Service) attacks from spammers so many\u00a0 sites have been down.\u00a0 I hope the issue has been solved…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas Morning at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge was nothing short of spectacular.\u00a0 We had great light,\u00a0 wonderfully clear blue skies\u00a0and lots of birds.\u00a0 And it was cold – as low as 6 degrees F.\u00a0 Perfect! On this trip (which included the Promontory Point area)\u00a0we\u00a0saw a plethora of raptors – Bald and Golden Eagles, Red-tailed Hawks, Rough-legged Hawks, American Kestrels, Short-eared Owls, a Prairie Falcon and one Barn Owl hunting in daylight because of the cold.   And I’ve never seen as many Great Blue Herons in one relatively\u00a0small area as I did on that morning.\u00a0 Just before I stopped to take this photo there\u00a0were over 100 of them on the ice of the canal to the\u00a0right and along the far bank in less than 1\/3 mile – which led to a topic of conversation.\u00a0 Mia is from Florida and we discussed how seeing Great Blue Herons on snow and ice seems incongruous to many folks from warmer climates.\u00a0 That conversation was the inspiration for\u00a0this post.     1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, natural light\u00a0 As is typical for western herons, these birds were difficult to approach (in some areas like Florida one can almost walk up and touch them at times).\u00a0 This juvenile was fishing in a patch of flowing water surrounded by ice and snow.     \u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, natural light Then the same bird flew off and then came back to land within a few feet of where it had been fishing – almost like it was…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,1094],"tags":[1095,49,863,141,712,178,180,286,316,855],"class_list":["post-10843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-great-blue-herons","tag-ardea-herodias","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-cold","tag-fish","tag-great-blue-heron","tag-hunting","tag-ice","tag-snow","tag-voles","tag-winter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-2OT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}