Birds of Wimberley - Waterbirds: Herons, Green Herons, Great Blue Herons, and More

GREAT BLUE HERON
Ardea herodias

Impressive Flyers

Reclining on your chaise lounge in the middle of the river with a great book, you hear the loud steady flap, flap (two beats a second to be exact) of the Great Blue Heron. Neck in an S, feet out behind him, he spreads his six-foot wingspan and navigates down the center of the river.

Imagine! It could be the same heron you saw when you were a child, for Great Blues often live to be over twenty years old.

What's For Dinner?

This stealthy solitary hunter stands motionless on the bank and strikes with his powerful beak, stabbing fish, snakes, frogs, lizards, crayfish, and salamanders. Usually, he lays the prey on the ground, picks it up and swallows it in one gulp! You can watch "Ichabod," Wimberley's most famous Great Blue, near the 7A Bridge.

The New Generation

Great Blue Herons build a large platform nest of interwoven sticks where they lay three to five blue eggs. Two months after the immobile, downy, closed-eyed chicks are born, they are flapping their wings and told, "Get out of the nest and find your own territory!" Herons in Wimberley sometimes nest in a small group together at night, and sometimes are solitary nesters.

On a cold winter morn, you may see the four-foot tall Great Blue, feathers fluffed, standing on one foot and tucking his beak away in his feathers. A fellow has to stay warm somehow!

LITTLE BLUE HERON
Egretta caerulea

Photograph © 2000, Frederick J. Sgrosso

Gone Fishing

Little Blue Herons love to eat fish, but on a lean fishing tour, they'll munch up some other aquatic life... especially the young fellows who don't have their fishing technique down to a science yet. You may see them in the rivers, marshes, ponds and creeks around Wimberley.


Empty-Nesters They prefer to join a rookery of other herons to build their platform nests and lay light blue-green eggs. Mom and Dad will stay round to incubate them for about two weeks and feed them well 'til the six-week-old beginning fishermen are firmly urged to fly off and forage elsewhere.	Photograph © Luke Wade

How Do You Romance A Woman?

If you are a Blue Heron, try neck stretching, bill clappering, wing preening
and circle flight. She'll join in with some bill snapping, mutual rubbing,
a bit of preening and some bill clappering herself.

More Heron photographs and details at
USGS

>>Great Blue Heron >>Little Blue Heron

CLICK HERE FOR WATERBIRDS, PART TWO>>

Waterbirds continues with Cormorants and Green Herons.

Article by Patsy Glenn
former Co-President of the
Wimberley Birding Society

We thank Fred Sgrosso
for his beautiful heron shots.
Visit his website here.