Category: Birds
These large, majestic wading birds are a common sight along coastlines, rivers, and other bodies of water that provide habitat for prey such as fish, frogs, and rodents. The heron will stand motionless until it has an opportunity to impale or grab unsuspecting prey with a lightning fast strike of its long, sharp beak. Great Blue Herons have a high percentage of rod-type photoreceptors in their eyes, giving them the ability to hunt both by day and by night.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_blue_heron
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Blue_Heron/lifehistory
Asleep at the wheel?
Can you imagine spending nearly all of your life in the air? The common swift doesn’t have to - it just does! From the day this bird learns to fly, it almost never touches the ground voluntarily - it eats, drinks, mates, and may even sleep while flying. While sleep walking can be problematic in humans, many birds have the ability to enter a state called unihemispheric slow-wave sleep, where one half of the brain sleeps as the other remains alert. This method of “sleeping with one eye open,” is a great way to avoid becoming another animal’s meal, and has led to the suspicion that these birds, who almost never willingly land, also sleep while in flight!
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Discover Animals is a web-based educational resource offered by the NAIA
