Still Hunting

Last week, after my daily meditation, I noticed a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) at the edge of the pond behind the house. It was motionless, the way they are when they hunt. A Nutria (Myocastor coypus) surfaced nearby, swam toward the bank, and settled in to munch on the grass. The heron paid it no attention and kept staring into the water.

Then, instead of striking at something, it made a short hop with a partial wing spread. Nothing unusual — I have seen that before. But then came another hop, and another. I got up and pointed my camera at it.

What I thought was a retracted leg turned out to be something else. The left foot was missing. Questions flooded my mind. Was it born that way? Did it lose the foot in an accident? Was it attacked by another animal? What preys on a heron this size?

That afternoon, as I sat down to write this post, I remembered another heron at this same pond, back on the Fourth of July. What caught my eye that day was that it was not standing. It was down in the water among the fallen branches, head up, body low, trying over and over to move. Something below the surface held its left leg and would not let go. A thin black section of that leg showed above the waterline.

The bird was already in distress, and I did not want to make things worse. I stayed back and used a long stick, working it slowly under the water where the leg disappeared, hoping to free whatever was holding it down. After two or three movements of the stick, the heron pulled itself loose and limped away. I never saw what had been holding it.

Could it be the same bird? Could that afternoon be when it lost its foot? I have no way to know. But after looking into it, I learned there are only a few likely answers, and being born this way is not one of them. A missing foot in a heron is almost always the result of an injury the bird sustained.

The best explanation is discarded fishing line. Monofilament is the most common cause of foot loss in wading birds. A loop tightens around the leg, circulation stops, the tissue below it dies and turns black, and the foot is eventually lost. A line snagged on a submerged branch would also explain a bird anchored in place and unable to rise. That thin black section of leg I saw in July is what keeps bringing me back to this.

People fish this pond all the time, including the very stretch of bank where I found the heron on the Fourth of July. I have no reason to think anyone is careless, and I would not want to suggest otherwise. Accidents happen. Hooks snag on branches, line breaks, and what is left behind sinks out of sight. Monofilament takes hundreds of years to break down, so it stays where it lands. This is only my speculation about this particular bird, but it is the kind of speculation the evidence keeps supporting.

The other possibility was in the pond that same month. We have Common Snapping Turtles (Chelydra serpentina) here — I photographed two of them later in July. A snapping turtle is strong enough to hold a bird down, and they are known to take adult waterbirds.

As for predators, an adult Great Blue Heron has almost none. Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) will take them at any age, and Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) occasionally do. Crows, ravens, vultures, and raccoons take the eggs and nestlings. None of that explains this bird.

So I am left with possibilities and no answer. I did the only thing I could: I kept watching, and I kept photographing. Whatever happened to it, the heron is still here, still hunting, still getting where it needs to go on one foot. Just another morning in the backyard, with nature teaching me a lesson in perseverance.

That is the story behind the shots. For more like this, enjoy these related stories: Bird of the Week, Great Blue Heron, Teravista, Texas, and Wildlife. Until the next shoot, keep chasing the light and the wonders it reveals.

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• Posted for I.J. Khanewala’s Birds of the Week Invitation CLXXXVII.

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Sources:

• Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds — Great Blue Heron, Life History — https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Blue_Heron/lifehistory
• National Audubon Society — This Common Form of Plastic Pollution Is a Menace to Birds — https://www.audubon.org/news/this-common-form-plastic-pollution-menace-birds
• U.S. Geological Survey — Common Snapping Turtle Preys on an Adult Western Grebe — https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/70037053
• USDA APHIS — Nutria (Myocastor coypus), an Invasive Rodent — https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/fsc-nutria-invasive-rodent.pdf
• Wikipedia — Great Blue Heron (predators of adults, eggs, and nestlings) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_blue_heron