{"id":33849,"date":"2015-09-02T05:49:13","date_gmt":"2015-09-02T11:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=33849"},"modified":"2015-09-02T12:22:17","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T18:22:17","slug":"great-blue-heron-repeatedly-baptizing-a-large-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/02\/great-blue-heron-repeatedly-baptizing-a-large-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Blue Heron Repeatedly “Baptizing” A Large Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

This behavior from a Great Blue Heron was new to me. Each of the following 7 images is presented in the order\u00a0it was taken.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc. not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I first\u00a0approached the bird yesterday morning at Bear River MBR it already had the fish, a large carp. At first it was still alive but based on its movement it wasn’t for long. I include this rear view because it gives us the best chance at judging the size of the carp (and because I like that flailing tongue).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc. not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The heron repeatedly dunked the fish in the water –\u00a0usually with a significant amount of time\u00a0(roughly\u00a015 to\u00a045 sec)\u00a0between each dunk.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc. not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here it did it again. The fish was dunked roughly 10 times in the 6 minutes I spent with it.<\/p>\n

At first I wondered if it was plunging the carp into the water in an attempt to get the fish off its bill because it had been impaled by the lower mandible but in reviewing my images I think not because\u00a0the upper mandible was always clamped tightly down on the carp during the behavior. Nor did I see any other evidence that it was trying to get the fish off of its bill.<\/p>\n

Because only the lower mandible penetrated the fish (something I’ve seen several times before)\u00a0it makes me wonder if herons instinctively open their bill slightly during the strike to give them a better chance of one of the mandibles\u00a0finding the\u00a0target. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc. not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

At this point the heron apparently decided it wanted to attempt to swallow this large meal in private so it began walking toward the\u00a0right side\u00a0of the clump of vegetation so it could hide behind it but even during the short trek it continued to plunge the fish into the water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc. not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here the carp is still covered with a sheet of water as it’s being retrieved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc. not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet another dunk into the water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc. not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eventually the heron made it to the edge of the vegetation clump, walked around it and disappeared from view so I don’t know if it was able to swallow the large fish.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this plunging behavior is common in the species but it was new to me and I can’t think of a purpose for doing so.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: Whenever I publish a post that involves carp I seem to get a lot of interest from readers in Europe and even Asia because their attitude toward the fish differs so remarkably from ours in North America. Here we generally think of them as trash fish but elsewhere they’re considered a trophy and excellent eating. Here in northern Utah carp are a scourge, largely because they displace native species and do\u00a0an incredible amount of\u00a0damage to wetland vegetation. Yesterday the Salt Lake Tribune published an interesting article <\/a>on\u00a0our attempts to control the carp population in nearby Utah Lake that I though some of my readers might be interested in.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This behavior from a Great Blue Heron was new to me.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33855,"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":[338,334,392,1094],"tags":[975,1095,49,74,712,2655,256],"class_list":["post-33849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-great-blue-herons","tag-adaptive-behavior","tag-ardea-herodias","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-carp","tag-great-blue-heron","tag-impaled","tag-prey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/great-blue-heron-2989-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8NX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33849","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=33849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}