2006 Rescue & Release

This fledgling Great Blue Heron came to Mississippi Wildlife Rehabilitation, Inc. with a leg injury. We caught it checking the local newspaper while it recovered in our care - to see if anyone cares enought to write about Mississippi's injured and orphaned wildlife. Later, it is seen ready to fly!

Standing still while hunting, or flapping slowly past with their huge wings, Great Blue Herons live in Mississippi, where there is clean water and forest. Adult herons stand 3' to 4' tall with a 6 foot wingspan but only weigh 5 to 6 pounds. They eat a wide variety of prey, including frogs, fish, salamanders, turtles, snakes, insects, rodents, and small birds. Herons have special patches of powder down feathers, which they rake with a foot, causing the powder to fall on fish it has caught. This special powder causes the fish slime and oil to clump up so that the herons then can simply brush it off with a foot, and a coating on underside of their bodies repels swamp slime and oils.

Young Great Blue Herons are semialtrical: they emerge from the eggs with a downy coat and their eyes open, but they aren't able to move about and must be fed by their parents. They mature in 6 weeks. Young herons in the nest are often killed by crows, ravens, gulls, hawks, eagles, and raccoons. Great Blue Herons often reuse a nest, adding sticks to it each year and usually lay from three to seven eggs. Nesting colonies are typically found in mature forests, on islands, or near mudflats, and do best when they are free of human disturbance and have foraging areas close by.