{"id":19690,"date":"2017-03-08T08:15:09","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T16:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=19690"},"modified":"2017-03-10T21:41:51","modified_gmt":"2017-03-11T05:41:51","slug":"heron-stance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=19690","title":{"rendered":"Heron stance"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

The first thing to realize is that this picture does not show what it appears to show.<\/p>\n

It is easy to imagine that this is a picture of a bird squatting to poop in a field. That is not what is going on, but what is this Great Blue Heron doing?\u00a0In a few decades of casual heron watching, this is only the second time I have seen a heron adopt this stance — it is far from being an everyday sighting. My first\u00a0sighting, in the summer of 2012, was posted with a detailed discussion as balalaika heron<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ok, the executive summary is that the heron is baking its parasites. The underwing feathers become infested with parasites, but they cannot withstand high temperatures. By exposing them to sunlight and so heating the underside of its wings, it kills and so rids itself of parasites.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was in the heat of summer on the earlier\u00a0time I saw a heron doing this. The heron had to go to a great effort to prevent the heated blood from reaching its brain by extending its neck. On this occasion, the air temperature is only about 5 \u00b0C and the heron’s neck is not extended, but the result is the same: feathers cleared of parasites.<\/p>\n

A Great Blue Heron bakes its parasites by spreading its wings and exposing them to sunlight.
\n \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The first thing to realize is that this picture does not show what it appears to show. It is easy to imagine that this is a picture of a bird squatting to poop in a field. That is not … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19690"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19706,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19690\/revisions\/19706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}