Great Blue Heron, still water
Ardea herodias
Great Blue Heron · Upstate New York · 16 August 2025
A Great Blue Heron standing still enough on an Upstate New York pond in August to double itself perfectly in water with barely a ripple on it. Great Blues hunt every kind of water across the continent, and a quiet pond in the Catskill foothills in late summer is exactly their sort of place.
The stillness is the method. A heron's eyes are set to look down the bill, and it can hold this for minutes at a time, then strike in a fraction of a second. A bird that moved would cast a shadow and empty the water around it.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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