Feathered Friends - Show Me A Photo Contest Round 269 The Great Blu...

Hello everyone and welcome to my post for SMAP contest round 269
This week is another free theme ;)

Today I am presenting images of a Great Blue Heron moving from one tide pool to another.
These images are from the same day as my previous post Cleared for Landing at the the same low tide mud flat at the West end of Woodly Island on Humbildt Bay.
At low tide this mud flat is exposed with several tide pools that fish get trapped in and hide in the kelp.
Several kinds of birds take advantage of the shallow pools to score an easy meal.

I chose this first image to enter in the SMAP contest round 269, hard choise and a coin flip lol

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This Great Blue Heron is a large bird standing around four feet tall with a wing span of six feet O.o
These birgs are fairly common here on Humboldt bay and I see them every time I vist the island.
I was already focused on this one waiting for it to do somethig other than just standing there and captured the move.

With one swoop of it's giant wings it easily lifts into the air to hunt fish in the next tide pool.

This is one of the few birds I will image from the back due to it's spectacular wings and unique featers.

The darker feathers in the wing are acually blue gray and if this were a suny day they would be flash more blue but in the more muted overcast they appear dark gray as are the the two bands to each side of the head.

In the next few images you can see the Black Crowned Night Heron I captured in my previouse post Cleared for Landing standing in the foreground. The Night Heron's dark feathers will also go to blue in the sunlight.

I captured close to 40 images in the short flight but paired them down to about half to showcase unique wing positions

Right now there are several tourists ooohing behind me trying to get pictures and videos with their cell phones.

Here comes the landing.

Frome the back you can see the multipul layers of feathers that adorn the back of this beautiful bird.

You can see the different layers and types of feathers on the back of the wings and body.

The leading edge of the wings are wispy downy like merging into the blue gray secondary feathers, these are more for insulation than flight. Then the dark blue gray of the primary flight fethers.

Also note the long wispy feathers streaming off the back, these are almos pure white, It also has these type of feathers hanging from the breast as well.

It's landed next to a very shallow pool and will go on to catch several fish here that I'll present to you in a later post.
Now all I have to do is choose the image to enter in the contest

Well that's it for today but I already have the next post of a Great Egret in the can and ready to write up. The actual hard part for me lol
See you all soon ;)

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Feathered Friends - Show Me A Photo Contest Round 269 The Great Blue Heron

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