A pair of Great Blue Herons were having lunch in the Botanical Gardens in the Golden Gate Park. One liked to dunk it's meal first, the other one gulped it down right then and there.
As a lil girl in the 70/80's, my sis & I used to watch Herons hunt too 😊 I still hold the same fascination at 46 y/o 😁 Gotta share this vid with my dad, who *still* fishes, matter of fact, he just returned from a lagoon fishing trip today
I need one of these at my place. Actually I love Great Blues, one of my favorite animals. A pair flew right over my balcony once when I was standing there. Amazing and beautiful birds. They look huge when they are right over head. Massive wing spread
It's more of an instinct. If you watch them fishing they do this as well. Dry fish scales are sticky, and quite deadly if your survival depends on being able to swallow your food whole with such a long neck. To counter this they will dunk their prey into the water to prevent this drying out. (Tl;dr Instinct tells them do this or die.)
That's so awesome, basically the Heron Spears them with its beak upon thrusting in their whole to catch them... You could see the blood dripping from the head shots!
Imagine being a gopher and youre peaking youre head out to check around and all you see is this long necked long legged sharp beaked creature standing above you and then just swallows you whole.
I used to tave one of these as a wild pet. Very trainable. We had him and a couple whites trained to come inside the house and eat from our hands. Feeding them by hand can be a little bloody though so be prepared to get stabbed a few times.
@@johnhamilton7495 No its not. They are not caged, they are wild birds that over time got drawn to taking food from us when cleaning fish. Then they started approaching us and we'd feed them scraps. The first one was a white egret with a broken beak so it couldn't hunt.
@@JohntechFL It is usually advised not to feed wild animals as they become humanized (or whatever the word is) and dependent on humans and if the said humans dissappear, the animals will die. This is usually morally and ethically not right and the individual/individuals can be even fined for this action.
Incredible eye and beak coordination with lightening speed. The way it soaks the gophers in water before gulping it down reminds me oh how my grandmother will dip pieces of bread in to hot chocolate drink before eating them.
They stalk and pounce like cats. Those beaks are weapons. You can see blood dripping from one of the gophers, probably dead from shock within seconds most of them I'd guess.
This is some serious no-fucking-around lunchtime pest control. I recall back in the 90's in San Diego, the koi started disappearing from the reflecting pool in the Botanical Garden. Eventually turned out a Japanese Giant Heron had somehow turned up in San Diego, perhaps blown across the Pacific by a storm. IIRC, they caught it and sent it back to Japan. Nice video, thanks for posting.
imagine seeing your friend open the front door when suddenly he gets pierced to the shoulder, pinned to the wall... looks at you in shocked disbelief for half a second, snd gets abducted to the sky gods ☠️
