Great Blue Heron, low water
Ardea herodias
Great Blue Heron · Constitution Marsh · 17 October 2026
A Great Blue Heron wading in front of a mud bank at Constitution Marsh, with last summer's dead marsh grasses hanging over it. The Hudson is tidal all the way up to Troy, about 150 miles from the sea, so even this far inland the marsh fills and drains twice a day, and the heron works the edges as the water drops.
The long plumes trailing down the lower neck and over the back are the kind the hat trade was paying a fortune for around 1900, when herons and egrets were shot by the hundred thousand at their nesting colonies. The outrage that followed founded the first Audubon societies, in the 1890s, and it is Audubon that looks after this marsh today.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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