Great Blue Heron, Japanese Pond
Ardea herodias
Great Blue Heron · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 17 June 2026
A Great Blue Heron fishing the pool of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a small, heavily visited pond that makes the herons that use it unusually tolerant of an audience. This one barely reacted to foot traffic a few feet along the path.
Great Blue Herons hunt by standing motionless for long stretches and striking only when a fish or frog comes within range, patience that looks a lot like a garden ornament until it doesn't. The koi in the pond are, from the heron's point of view, the whole reason for the garden.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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