{"id":13247,"date":"2012-02-19T21:22:04","date_gmt":"2012-02-19T21:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/?p=13247"},"modified":"2012-02-26T03:47:42","modified_gmt":"2012-02-26T03:47:42","slug":"nesting-grey-herons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/2012\/02\/19\/nesting-grey-herons\/","title":{"rendered":"Nesting Grey Herons"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Grey Heron with nesting material (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Quite a cold afternoon’s walk today; but the sun was up, the golfers were out, and so too were our local herons.\u00a0 I snapped this one just before sunset. \u00a0 He’s a Grey Heron (Aredea cinerea<\/em>) and common in the UK.\u00a0 (I keep an eye out for the Blue Heron and super-rare Purple Heron, that occasionally visit the UK, but have seen neither.)<\/p>\n

\"Grey<\/a>
Grey Heron (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Grey<\/a>
Grey Heron (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Herons nest in colonies, and this one looked like it contained three birds: two adults flying back and forth to the nest, and a smaller ‘second winter’ juvenile that stayed put (the one on the left of the pair in these shots).<\/p>\n

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Grey Heron (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was surprised to see nest-building this time of year, but the hardy heron’s extended breeding season sees them happily dropping eggs in late February.\u00a0 That’s not to say the smaller bird here is a chick – they leave the nest by 10 weeks, and this one’s plumage is too mature.\u00a0 I’m guessing it just wasn’t his\/her shift for twig collection.<\/p>\n

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Grey Heron (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They’re fantastic birds to watch.\u00a0 Very noisy and, to my eyes, especially dinosaury.\u00a0 I also like the retracted neck position adopted for steady flight; it’s like their head goes along for the ride in upper-deck business class.\u00a0 It’s also one way to tell herons apart from cranes.<\/p>\n

\"Grey<\/a>
Grey Heron flying with retracted neck (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Heron’s nest is a large flat platform of twigs in the top of a tree.\u00a0 The males do most of the collecting, the females most of the building.<\/p>\n

\"Grey<\/a>
Grey Heron (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Grey<\/a>
Grey Heron (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These last two shots of the nest show an adult bird on the right, and what I suspect is a ‘second winter’ juvenile on the left (tell me if you think differently).\u00a0\u00a0 Despite the stance, there was no feeding going on here.<\/p>\n

\"Grey<\/a>
Grey Herons: adult (right) with 'second winter' juvenile (left) (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Grey<\/a>
Grey Herons: adult (right) with 'second winter' juvenile (left) (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s days like this that justify carrying heavy cameras and lenses around on the off-chance something might show up. \u00a0 Next phase is to return with the tripod and get some HD movies of these guys. Watch this space!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quite a cold afternoon’s walk today; but the sun was up, the golfers were out, and so too were our local herons.\u00a0 I snapped this one just before sunset. \u00a0 He’s a Grey Heron (Aredea cinerea) and common in the UK.\u00a0 (I keep an eye out for the Blue Heron and super-rare Purple Heron, that … Continue reading Nesting Grey Herons<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,175,1151,964],"tags":[1264,1265,1266],"class_list":["post-13247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-biology","category-ornithology","category-photography","tag-grey-heron","tag-heron","tag-nesting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-3rF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13247"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13265,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13247\/revisions\/13265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}