#Hungry #Eatduck #Eatmice #Eatturtles #Eatbirds 💚🦅💚🦅💚 💚🦅💚🦅 #Heron Equipped with a very long, sharp beak the Heron will use its beak either to stab or, like a pair of tongs, to snap up its prey, reposition it with a toss of a well-plumed head and  swallow the catch head first. Repositioning prey, especially fish, prevents the throat being cut by sharp spines and prevents the Heron from choking if the fish is too large. Although fish are the main prey, Herons will also eat a variety of food including mice, frogs, young birds, insects and other small mammals. Great Blue Herons are very social birds, living in communal colonies away from humans; however as can be seen at Stanley Park in Vancouver, BC, Herons do adapt to urban areas. It still amazes me that these gangly creatures choose to build their nests high in the treetops; where it is not easy to land, leaves their eggs and young at the peril of predators and  offers little shelter from wind and rain. Herons will re-use their nests and return to the same rookery for many years. They are susceptible to human encroachment and will abandon their nesting sites if they feel threatened or if the trees decay and die. Young herons have a very tough start in life; before they hatch, eggs are often stolen by crows, ravens or other birds. Heron parents take turns incubating the eggs; once hatched both parents provide the young with pre-digested, regurgitated food until the young Herons are ready to fledge in about for ten weeks. Very often due to the precarious location of the nests, especially the treetop sites, the young will fall from the nests when trying to exercise their large ungainly legs and wings, when this happens the young usually perish as the dense undergrowth beneath the trees makes it impossible for the parents to reach or feed them. http://www.marswildliferescue.com/great-blue-heron/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BvUZilJFQLE/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1jjlao94vjuan