“The most spectacular display given by herons on the foraging grounds is the Upright and Spread Wing display that is given when two herons approach one another. The neck is nearly fully extended and tilted slightly over the back, the head and bill are held above the horizontal, and the wrists are drooped or held away from the body exposing the black shoulder patch of the adult. Sometimes the wing nearest the opponent is drooped lower than the opposite wing and the body plumes are erected. As opponents approach one another, the head and bill are raised closer to the vertical and the neck extended farther over the back. These displays usually cause the two herons to move apart but occasionally bring a chase. This display is sometimes directed towards gulls (Larus sp.), Great Egrets (Casmerodius albus), and even people.”<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\nI wish I could have a do-over with these herons so I could keep my teleconverter off of my big lens the entire time and so I’d know precisely when to switch to my smaller zoom lens but bird photography doesn’t work that way. I’ll have to be satisfied with experiencing the behavior and getting the photos I did.<\/p>\n
But I do wish I could just say “Take Two” like a movie director and have another go at it.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
PS – I’d be interested in knowing if any of my readers have seen this precise behavior in Great Blue Herons.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After twelve years of photographing birds and paying particular attention to their behaviors it isn’t every day that I witness a ritualized aggressive behavior that’s new to me. But it happened yesterday at Bear River MBR with a couple of Great Blue Herons, seemingly on steroids.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76318,"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":[338,334,394,1094],"tags":[1934,1095,49,140,712,4750,311],"class_list":["post-76313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-great-blue-herons","tag-aggressive-display","tag-ardea-herodias","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-fighting","tag-great-blue-heron","tag-upright-and-spread-wing-display","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/great-blue-heron-6307-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-jQR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76313","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=76313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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