{"id":170314,"date":"2025-12-03T06:02:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T13:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=170314"},"modified":"2025-12-03T07:00:53","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:00:53","slug":"great-blue-heron-perched-taking-off-and-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/03\/great-blue-heron-perched-taking-off-and-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Blue Heron Perched, Taking Off And In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago I spent way too much time trying to get photos I like of a Great Blue Heron who spent most of ‘his’ time in settings that were unattractive or in shade. Or both. So I gave up on the heron and focused my attention on a female Belted Kingfisher. Within minutes she’d caught a fish but she landed with it in a tree where she was mostly obstructed by twigs and branches.<\/p>\n

I was beginning to think it was going be a “skunked’ kind of morning.<\/p>\n

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That’s when I noticed that when I wasn’t looking the heron had landed on the most ideal perch in or near the entire pond – a mostly submerged stump in the shallow pond in almost perfect light. It was 23\u00b0 F. so the stump even had a little snow on top of it from a storm the day before.<\/p>\n

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I didn’t have to wait long for him to take off.<\/p>\n

If you’re familiar with Great Blue Herons you’ll likely notice that his takeoff and flight are a little different from most by this species. His intended destination was another stump along the shore on the far side of the pond. That new perch was only about 75′ away, with a flight across nothing but water, so it would be a leisurely takeoff and short flight that didn’t require much effort because he had no reason to gain elevation.<\/p>\n

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In fact, he began his takeoff with…<\/p>\n

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what almost looked like…<\/p>\n

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a little dance, eventually taking off by pushing off with only one foot, since he didn’t really need to gain elevation.<\/p>\n

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Airborne.<\/p>\n

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Now about all he needed to do was gain a little speed, but not much.<\/p>\n

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In this shot and the previous one the heron is pretty much centered in the frame so I could include all of the perch he took off from for as long as possible.<\/p>\n

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In this photo and several others, I like that we can see the slight disturbance on the surface of the water caused by…<\/p>\n

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the downward airflow caused by his beating wings. It’s subtle but I notice stuff like that.<\/p>\n

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He was so low his feet, or at least his left foot, dipped into the water just before this shot was taken. All of these photos are sequential shots in a burst without any skips, and my burst rate is 12 frames per second, so I’m a little surprised that I missed capturing his foot (or feet) in the water.<\/p>\n

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But I didn’t miss it…<\/p>\n

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the next time.<\/p>\n

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In this last shot of him in flight I’m beginning to lose detail on the left side of the frame because of out of focus vegetation between me and the heron. I got five more sharp shots before he landed without cutting off any body parts but because of the increasing amount of lost detail I’m not including them here.<\/p>\n

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This is where he landed. It’s his favorite grooming perch.<\/p>\n

You may be seeing more photos of this heron sometime soon. On this same morning I documented a special skill of his. To be honest, I don’t know if he’s highly skilled or just lucky but I was delighted to document the unusual behavior, even though the most important photos I got were partially obstructed.\u00a0But you’ll be able to see what’s most important.<\/p>\n

Sorry for the teaser but I already included more than enough photos for a single post. And I’m tired of processing.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Finally, I found this heron in the most desirable setting available on the pond. (15 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170358,"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":[146,712,851,311],"class_list":["post-170314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-great-blue-herons","tag-flight","tag-great-blue-heron","tag-taking-off","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/great-blue-heron-2188-for-FB-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Ij0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170314","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=170314"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170380,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170314\/revisions\/170380"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}