Spesies and Habitat Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)
Species Code: ARHE

Description: The Great Blue Heron is the largest and most widespread heron in North America. It is a large bird, with a slate-gray body, chestnut and black accents, and very long legs and an "S"-shaped neck. Great Blue Herons are very tall and stand 38-54 inches (97-137 cm). In flight, the bird looks enormous, with a six-foot wingspan.

Calls: The call of the Great Blue Heron is a deep, hoarse croak.
Listen to songs of this species »

Range / Habitat: In Washington, the Great Blue Heron is common in marshes, mud flats, and agricultural areas at low to mid elevations on both sides of the Cascade crest. They nest colonially in trees near water and then disperse to feeding areas. Along river valleys they may be found at fairly high elevations, for example, along the Skagit River near Ross Lake. Great Blue Herons also occur at some mid-elevation lakes in Kittitas County, however, these birds may not be breeding. In eastern Washington, the Great Blue Heron is generally found from the Ponderosa Pine zone and below in suitable habitat, but it is occasionally found much higher. Click the range map to learn more about the distribution of Great Blue Herons in Washington.

Diet: Great Blue Herons feed on fish, amphibians, reptiles, invertebrates, small mammals, and even other birds. In Washington, much of their winter hunting is on land, with voles making up a major portion of their winter diet. (Seattle Audubon Society)

Behavior: When foraging, they stand silently along the shore, waiting for prey to come by, then they stab the prey with a quick lunge of the bill. They will also stalk prey slowly and deliberately.

Both parents regurgitate food to feed the young. The young birds can first fly at about 60 days old, but they continue to return to the nest and are fed by the adults for another few weeks. Pair bonds only last for the nesting season, and adults form new bonds each year.
Nesting: Nesting colonies are typically found in mature forests, on islands, or near mudflats. Great blue herons do best when they are free of human disturbance and have foraging areas near by.

Great Blue Herons typically breed in colonies containing a few to several hundred pairs. Nest building begins in February when a male chooses a nesting territory and actively displays to attract a female. The large nest is usually built high up in a tree. The male gathers sticks for the female who constructs a platform nest lined with small twigs, bark strips, and conifer needles. The female lays 2-6 pale blue eggs, then both parents incubate them for 25-29 days (4 weeks) until the young hatch. The parents bring food to young at the nest for two months before the young can fly and continue feeding the birds for a few weeks after fledging the nest.

Did you know?

• Great Blue Herons look enormous in flight, with a six-foot wingspan
• Both parents incubate the eggs for 25-29 days (4 weeks)
• In flight, a Great Blue Heron usually holds its head close to its body with the neck bent.
• The young can first fly at about 60 days old

An adult Great Blue Heron near Portage Bay in Seattle.

More information: BirdWeb: Great Blue Heron All About Birds: Great Blue Heron

More photos: Great Blue Heron Photos on the Wildlife Web

Great Blue Heron feathers

Citizen Science: Great Blue Heron
This is a collaborative project that takes advantage of Flickr's new geotagging capability -- allowing you to identify the location of every photograph on a global map. The goal is to collect and document the migration patterns of great blue herons.

Wing Great Blue Heron

This adult Great Blue Heron photo shows off the details of its magnificent wing feathering - primaries, secondaries & upper wing coverts all perfectly located and overlapped. Its 6-foot wingspan makes the Great Blue Heron a beautiful sight to watch flying with its slow wingbeats.

Great Blue Heron rookery!

We woke up early this morning, went to our favorite (and only) neighborhood coffee shop and walked with the dogs near the Mississippi River. We live just blocks away from it and recently discovered the most charming park that we never knew existed. While walking along one of the paths we found a Great Blue Heron rookery! We have counted at LEAST 40 nests. It is amazing and beautiful. Everywhere you look just on the other side of the river you can see these spectacular birds.

Seagull death

These two guys were going 180mph in a Mitsubishi Evo and ended up hitting a seagull. It's exactly what you're imagining, so if the idea of hitting a bird at that speed disturbs you don't watch the video.

One more clip after the jump, showing the speedometer maxed out right before impact.

Flock of seagulls flying

I was walking on the beach this day and was very lucky to catch this seagull in flight. It was a fantastic moment. I just knew I had gotten a good photo, even though it's slightly out of focus. Oh, well.

Pelican chick swallowing

Families strolling through a London park were left shocked when a pelican picked up and swallowed an unsuspecting pigeon.

The Eastern White pelican struggled with the desperately frantic pigeon in its beak for more than 20 minutes before swallowing it whole.

The moment was caught on camera by photographer Cathal McNaughton, who was taking pictures of the wildlife in St James's Park.

The pigeon was still alive when it reached the pelican's stomach, he said.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-412374/Children-aghast-pelican-swallows-pigeon-whole.html#ixzz0dHE00ahW

Pelican is one of the largest birds

The American White Pelican is one of the largest birds found in South Dakota. They are migrants through most of the state, but do nest in some of the northeastern counties. Unlike their cousins, the Brown Pelican, American White Pelicans do not plunge dive, but feed by dipping their large pouched bill into the water and scooping up fish. Note the raised bump on the top of the beak (shown in bird to the right) is only present during the breeding season.

Habitat: Lakes, marshes, rivers. Nests on isolated islands and sandbars, may feed many miles from nesting site.

Diet: Mostly fish, also salamanders and crustaceans.

Behavior: Feeds by dipping bill into the water and scooping up prey. They will often forage together in groups, lining up and driving prey fish to shallower waters for easier capture.

Pelican bird food

Pelican wallpaper

Pelican nesting birds

The Australian Pelican is a large bird and found commonly almost all over Australia. The birds make home to any land with a suitable piece of water, freshwater or saltwater.







Pelecanus conspicillatus

Beauty pelican birds

Pelican birds photo

Pelican events in California

The latest reports out of California have it that the Brown Pelicans turning up dead or dying along the coast of that state may have succumbed to bad weather.

The birds had been spending time off the coast of Oregon when a severe storm hit, driving the birds south and inland, fleeing the winds and freezing temperatures. Many of the birds recovered by rescuers showed signs of frostbite on their feet and pouches, suggesting that the birds were indeed unprepared for the unusually harsh conditions. As many of the birds were in good body condition, it does not appear that the birds had been suffering from a protracted illness and may simply have been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The diagnosis of this event has been a good example of multiple agencies and wildlife groups working together to determine the cause of an unusual mortality event, and also shows that sometimes these things stem from the most quotidian roots.

The diversity of Psittaciformes

The diversity of Psittaciformes in South America and Australasia suggests that the order has a Gondwanan origin, while the center of origins appears to be Australasian.^[8] The parrot family's fossil record, however, is sparse and their origin can so far only be inferred.

A single 15 mm fragment from a large lower bill (UCMP 143274), found in Lance Creek Formation deposits of Niobrara County, Wyoming, has been suggested as the first parrot fossil.^[9] Of Late Cretaceous age, it is about 70 million years old. But subsequent reviews^[10][11] have established that this fossil is almost certainly not from a bird, but from a caenagnathid theropod—a non-avian dinosaur with a birdlike beak.

It is now generally assumed that the Psittaciformes or their common ancestors with a number of related bird orders were present somewhere in the world around the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, some 65 mya (million years ago). If so, they probably had not evolved their morphological autapomorphies yet, but were generalized arboreal birds, roughly similar (though not necessarily closely related) to today's potoos or frogmouths (see also Palaeopsittacus below).

Europe is the origin of the first generally accepted parrot fossils. The first is a wingbone of Mopsitta tanta, uncovered in Denmark and dated to 54 mya (million years ago).^[12] The climate at this time was tropical, consistent with the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Later fossils date from the Eocene, starting around 50 mya. Several fairly complete skeletons of parrot-like birds have been found in England and Germany.^[13] Some uncertainty remains, but on the whole it seems more likely that these are not direct ancestors of the modern parrots, but related lineages which evolved in the Northern Hemisphere but have since died out. These are probably not "missing links" between ancestral and modern parrots, but rather psittaciform lineages that evolved parallel to true parrots and cockatoos and had their own peculiar autapomorphies:

• Psittacopes (Early/Middle Eocene of Geiseltal, Germany) – basal?
• Serudaptus – pseudasturid or psittacid?
• Pseudasturidae (Halcyornithidae may be correct name)
  • Pseudasturides – formerly Pseudastur
• Quercypsittidae
  • Quercypsitta (Late Eocene)

The earliest records of modern parrots date to about 23–20 mya and are also from Europe. Subsequently, the fossil record—again, mainly from Europe—consists of bones clearly recognizable as belonging to parrots of modern type. The Southern Hemisphere does not have nearly as rich a fossil record for the period of interest as the Northern, and contains no known parrot-like remains earlier than the early to middle Miocene, around 20 mya. At this point, however, is found the first unambiguous parrot fossil (as opposed to a parrot-like one), an upper jaw which is indistinguishable from that of modern cockatoos. A few modern genera are tentatively dated to a Miocene origin, but their unequivocal record stretches back only some 5 million years (see genus articles for more).

The named fossil genera of parrots are probably all in the Psittacidae or close to its ancestry:

• Archaeopsittacus (Late Oligocene/Early Miocene)
• Xenopsitta (Early Miocene of Czechia)
• Psittacidae gen. et spp. indet. (Bathans Early/Middle Miocene of Otago, New Zealand) - several species
• Bavaripsitta (Middle Miocene of Steinberg, Germany)
• Psittacidae gen. et sp. indet. (Middle Miocene of France) - erroneously placed in Pararallus dispar, includes "Psittacus" lartetianus

Some Paleogene fossils are not unequivocally accepted to be of psittaciforms:

• Palaeopsittacus (Early — Middle Eocene of NW Europe) - caprimulgiform (podargid?) or quercypsittid?
• "Precursor" (Early Eocene) - part of this apparent chimera seems to be of a pseudasturid or psittacid
• Pulchrapollia (Early Eocene) — includes "Primobucco" olsoni - psittaciform (pseudasturid or psittacid)?

372 Species parrot

Parrots, also known as psittacines (pronounced /ˈsɪtəsaɪnz/),^[2][3] are birds of the roughly 372 species in 86 genera that make up the order Psittaciformes,^[4] found in most warm and tropical regions. The order is subdivded in three families: the Psittacidae ('true' parrots), the Cacatuidae (cockatoos) and the Strigopidae (New Zealand parrots).^[5] Parrots have a pan-tropical distribution with several species inhabiting the temperate Southern Hemisphere as well. The greatest diversity of parrots is found in South America and Australasia.

Characteristic features of parrots include a strong curved bill, an upright stance, strong legs, and clawed zygodactyl feet. Most parrots are predominantly green, with other bright colors, and some species are multi-colored. Cockatoo species range from mostly white to mostly black, and have a mobile crest of feathers on the top of their heads. Most parrots are monomorphic or minimally sexually dimorphic. They are the most variably sized bird order in terms of length.

The most important components of most parrots' diets are seeds, nuts, fruit, buds and other plant material, and a few species also eat insects and small animals, and the lories and lorikeets are specialised to feed on nectar from flowers, and soft fruits. Almost all parrots nest in tree holes (or nest boxes in captivity), and lay white eggs from which emerge altricial (helpless) young.

Parrots, along with ravens, crows, jays and magpies, are some of the most intelligent birds, and the ability of some parrot species to imitate human voices enhances their popularity as pets. Trapping of wild parrots for the pet trade, as well as other hunting, habitat loss and competition from invasive species, have diminished wild populations, and parrots have been subjected to more exploitation than any other group of birds.^[6] Recent conservation measures to conserve the habitats of some of the high-profile charismatic parrot species has also protected many of the less charismatic species living in the ecosystem.^[7]

Parrot

Green Parrot image

Parrot

Blue Parrot Image

Eagle

also the fastest flying eagle

Eagle

Eagle is one of the king of the sky

Peacock

Make fur often the symbol of beauty

Peacock

Beautiful color Peacock

Peacock

Peacock feather beauty