Resting Blue Heron

by Bruce Bley

Title

Resting Blue Heron

Artist

Bruce Bley

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

I took this photograph of a Blue Heron resting on a fallen tree branch while on a recent fishing trip to northern Wisconsin. He didn't seem to mind me taking his picture at the time. Blue herons are know to wade in shallow areas of the lake looking for food (fish) that they can eat or take back to their young ones at the nest.

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 America and Central America as well as the Caribbean and the Gal￿gos Islands. It is a rare vagrant to Europe, with records from Spain, the Azores, England and the Netherlands. An all-white population found only in the Caribbean and southern Florida was once treated as a separate species and known as the great white heron.

It is the largest North American heron and, among all extant herons, it is surpassed only by the Goliath heron (Ardea goliath) and the white-bellied heron (Ardea insignis). It has head-to-tail length of 91￿137 cm (36￿54 in), a wingspan of 167￿201 cm (66￿79 in), a height of 115￿138 cm (45￿54 in), and a weight of 1.82￿3.6 kg (4.0￿7.9 lbs.).

The great blue heron is found throughout most of North America, as far north as Alaska and the southern Canadian provinces. The range extends south through Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean to South America. Birds east of the Rocky Mountains in the northern part of their range are migratory and winter in Central America or northern South America. From the southern United States southwards, and on the Pacific coast, they are year-round residents. However their hardiness is such that individuals often remain through cold northern winters, as well, so long as fish-bearing waters remain unfrozen (which may be the case only in flowing water such as streams, creeks and rivers).

I hope you have enjoyed this work and will share it with others. You can see more of my work in the various galleries on my website. Thank you for visiting and please comeback.

Uploaded

June 24th, 2015

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