Largest heron in North America...

Photos by Barry Wallace

Great Blue Heron

Ardea herodias

Breeds across southern Canada south to Mexico and Florida.  Winters from British Columbia and southern New England southward.   It thrives in all kinds of waters, from subtropical mangrove swamps to desert rivers, even to the coastline of southern Alaska.   Its diet is highly variable, mostly fish, but also frogs, salamanders, turtles, snakes, insects, rodents and birds.   It is common and widespread here in Ontario and around the Great Lakes.   It flies with slow wingbeats, with its long neck coiled back on to itself and it its long legs trailing behind.    That thick, daggerlike bill is just over 14.3 cm long, or just over 5 1/2 in. 

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BarrytheBirder