Savage Great Blue Heron Eats Huge Fish, Snakes and a Rabbit

The Great Blue Heron – One of the largest wading birds on the planet that is often noted for its elegant plumage and who can deny it’s amazing feathers. This bird looks like it spent a few hours in the makeup chair on the set of the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

During mating season these birds adamantly display love and affection for each other as their heads and necks ironically form the shape of a heart.

This is a bird that can appear almost regal at times but don’t let this bird’s regal beauty and angelic like grace fool you. The Great Blue Heron might be classified as a simple wading bird but it is one of the most ruthless birds of prey, ever. 

Seeing a Great Blue Heron with a fish is pretty common. Fish do make up the majority of this bird’s diet.

It also isn’t too unusual to see a great blue heron capture a small snake like this. Small snakes aren’t much of a challenge even if they do appear to tie things up in knots.

Larger snakes on the other hand can prove to be quite the challenge for our quote rather simple “wading” bird. It also begs the question whose got who.

When the heron’s prized snake is in excess of 3 feet or a meter, things get a little unnerving to say the least.

These birds are amazing hunters, there is no doubt about that but last night I witnessed a Great Blue Heron do something completely savage and from now on that I will refer to this bird as the Savage Heron.

The bird was a good distance away and it was standing by the water’s edge. It glanced to its left and quickly ran into some tall grass. I knew this bird was on to something and I could barely make out its head as it repeatedly stabbed something hiding in the tall grass. The heron reached down into the grass, turned and came back to the water’s edge. Dangling from the savage heron’s spear shaped beak was a rabbit.

Now I know these birds will take rats and other small mammals but seeing a heron standing at the water’s edge with a rabbit swaying from its beak was a little frightening. The real scary part was not seeing this heron repeatedly stab the rabbit but hold the rabbit under the surface of the water until it quit moving. This bird knew that the rabbit needed air to survive and drowning it was the quickest way to put an end to the struggle. And in case you are wondering, yes this savage heron somehow managed to swallow the entire rabbit head first.