Photo Study Of A Few Great Blue Herons At Peace Valley Park (Bucks County, PA), July 3rd, 2010

There were a few Great Blue Herons at Peace Valley Park today but one of them put on a really neat flight show right in front of the Chapman Bridge this morning. The Great Blue Heron is not a rare bird in our area and I see lots of them at Peace Valley, Brigantine in New Jersey and Bombay Hook NWR in Delaware. Throughout the years there have been nesting colonies of them in the Quakertown Swamp and at Lake Nockamixon.

But this beautiful bird is so incredibly graceful when it is stalking its prey and it is even more so when it is in flight. Today the Great Blue Herons ate fish but they also, would you believe, caught and ate dragonflies which they grabbed from the bushes around the impoundment.

Great Blue Heron Portrait

Great Blue Heron Eats A Dragonfly

Great Blue Heron Stalks

Great Blue Heron Catches A Fish

The Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) is a large wading bird in the heron family Ardeidae, common near the shores of open water and in wetlands over most of North and Central America as well as the West Indies and the Galápagos Islands. It is a rare vagrant to Europe, with records from Spain, the Azores and England. An all-white population found only in the Caribbean and south Florida was once known as a separate species, the Great White Heron. The Great Blues are 3 1/2 to 4 1/2  feet in height; have a wingspan of 5 1/2 to 7 feet and weigh just 4 to 7 1/2 pounds. (Wikpedia; Cornell BNA and National Geographic)

To see a larger image of any of the photos below, please click on either the thumbnails or the captions...thanks!

 © Howard B. Eskin 2010             Please email your comments to hbeskin@voicenet.com       Please click here to go back to Bird Webpage Index