Great Blue Heron

a familiar trail companion where i live.

beautiful

cool...is there just one or are there more?

I love these birds, we get them here too.

Aren't they a hoot when you unexpectedly flush one at very close range?

A couple nights ago, I went for a night hike up one of the local hills (6 miles RT, plus 2000 ft or so of climb. On the down trail, I spotted these two critters - not as pretty as the blue heron, but denizens of the night, none the less. I am not sure the exact species for the two of them, just that they are toads.

They were about 1000 ft different in elevation, but both quite some distance from any water (ponds or streams).

I saw Great Blue Herons occasionally when I was growing up in upstate NY, but for the longest time never saw one here in California (lots of cattle egrets, though).  Then one day a few years ago I saw one at Franklin Lake in Sequoia NP.  I didn't think they would go that high - the lake is at 10,330'.  I guess it makes sense, the lake is chock full of small brookies.

Beautiful birds. I used to see them in the streams and marshes out on the  prairie. Always made me stop and take a good, long look.

I like herons as well. My family lives across the street from Chickamauga Lake, a TVA reservoir, and the Herons became extremely familiar to me. 

One Autumn, I decided to sleep out on the dock when the first good cold front moved through. In the middle of the night I woke to a most stunning moonlit lakescape. I sat up, and was greeted by the most terrifyingly loud and harsh croaking cry, followed by the violent trashing, beating, and whooshing of wings! For a moment it seems a pterodactyl had come to eat me, but in truth I had only scared the crap out of a Great Blue heron that was siting right behind me when I woke, Ha! 
 

in and around the potomac river & the adjacent C&O Canal, we get a lot of blue heron.  also a lot of osprey (often mistaken for eagles), hawks, vultures.   

once, over 10 years ago, i was hiking along with my four year old son (he's 15 now and almost my height).  we spotted a heron catching a fish, which was really fun to see....until it promptly tore the fish to pieces and ate it in a lovely display of bloody mayhem.  not surprisingly, i had many questions from my son about whether that was real, what that red stuff was.....

I grew up on the coast of nc and I have been startled by the sounds described above while gigging flounder. Its enough commotion and sound to scare you into falling ouof your boat. They are a common sight eating in the shallows of nc's many bays.

cool birds. I wish we had them here.

It is fun to see heron rookeries on a big river somewhere.  I have a friend that lives on a trawler at a marina in Sausalito north of SF.  There is a great blue that lives around the marina and frequently walks around on the dock in the early morning.  It is fun to see visitor's go eyeball to eyeball with a bird that big that is used to people.

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