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Borrowing

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  • Wildlife
  • 2 min read

This is another photograph of a Great Blue Heron from my trip to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in South Texas. I caught this Heron “Borrowing” a stick from another nest in order to build their own. Other birds were flying their sticks in from other parts of the Refuge but this bird decided to take a shortcut and let other birds do the hard work.

The Great Blue Heron is mostly a colonial nester (as was the case here) but occasionally they nest in single pairs. Colonies are typically found in lowland swamps, islands, upland hardwoods and forests adjacent to lakes, ponds and rivers. The platform like nests are constructed out of medium-sized sticks and materials may be added throughout the nesting cycle. Nests are usually lined with finer twigs, leaves, grass, pine needles, moss, reeds, or dry grass. The same nests are refurbished and used year after year. Nest size varies; newer nests may be 18 inches in diameter with older nests reaching up to 4 feet in diameter.

Great Blue Heron
Great Blue Heron

This image was taken with my Canon EOS 5DS using my Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 II Lens set on 400 mm. The Manual mode with the aperture set at f/8, shutter speed at 1/2000th of a second and the ISO set at 640. This was a single image processed in Lightroom.

You can view my Birds of Texas collection by clicking here. Please use the section below to post your comments, questions, or suggestions.

T. Kahler Photography
© 2016 T. Kahler Photography

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