Subject: [Tweeters] Fun at Nisqually
Date: Mar 29 13:08:32 2010
From: B&PBell - bellasoc at isomedia.com


Hi Burt and Tweets

Your account reminded me that last fall, while scouting for the WOS Conference I was walking the boardwalk at the Mt. St. Helens visitor center at Seaquest State Park. As I came to a bend in the boardwalk a Great Blue Heron was making valiant efforts to position and swallow an American Coot. Both critters were doing there best to get the advantage of the other. The Great Blue was not comfortable with my presence and flew a ways further off into the marsh where it was not visible, so I did not see the final result. But, based on my last view I suspect that the heron got a very large meal.

Brian H. Bell
Woodinville Wa
mail to bell asoc at iso media dot com
----- Original Message -----
From: Guttman,Burt
To: Tweeters
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2010 10:15 AM
Subject: [Tweeters] Fun at Nisqually


Several people out walking yesterday at Nisqually NWR, both casual and serious birders, got quite a show from a Great Blue Heron. We had stopped to admire it as it stood frozen in the shallows along the eastside boardwalk, when suddenly it lashed out and came up with a huge frog -- a bullfrog, I'm quite sure. It stood there, trying to adjust the frog in its bill as people wondered at the size of its intended meal and speculated about whether, and how, it could get the frog in position to swallow. It kept manipulating the frog for several minutes, sometimes letting it down to the tips of its bill and dipping the frog in the water. Then it flew off, a little farther down the shallow ditch, and we all walked down that direction and found it again, still struggling to position the frog. This must have taken at least ten minutes, until finally -- I think we were all rather astonished -- it got the frog into the right position and quickly zhooobsh down it went into the heron's mouth, and we could see its throat expanding. Some people wondered what it feels like to have a live animal in your stomach. One woman recalled seeing a heron, somewhere else, that ate three snakes, one right after the other.

Then just a few meters farther along the ditch we found a Bittern sitting in a little grassy patch. For a few minutes, the Bittern's body oscillated back and forth, in a slight sideways motion; I've never seen this before, and I speculated that perhaps the bird had just swallowed a meal -- it had just come up onto the grass from the water --and that this motion was helping it settle the meal in its stomach. Any other ideas?

A few minutes earlier, a lot of people had enjoyed the sight of one Great Horned Owl -- no young birds. And the bulbous, hanging Bushtit nest is easily seen from the eastside boardwalk -- I'm surprised they build it so far out in the open.

Lots of Shovelers and Pintails on the west side, and tons of geese still. All in all, a very pleasant day.

Burt Guttman
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505 guttmanb at evergreen.edu
Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S. E., Olympia, 98503



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