H to the O to the L to the Y to the CRAP!! Heron Eats Rabbit!
WARNING!!!
WARNING!!!
WARNING!!!
Disapproving Rabbit fans and general cute bunny lovers (that means you, Non Birding Bill) do NOT want to click on any links or even read the following blog post.
STOP READING NOW!
But it is bird related and I find this horribly fascinating as a birder and I think that's enough stahling.
A grey heron has eaten a rabbit--and there's photographic documentation. Yeperooni that is the headline. I just did another Big River Journey today for the National Park Service today and I was just discussing the things that great blue herons will eat: fish, frogs, smaller birds, snakes, nestlings (there's a reason red-winged blackbirds bop the on the head). A little boy brought up that his neighbor told him a heron was chasing chipmunks on their lawn. It's not common, but a small chipmunk is certainly not out of the realm of possibility for a great blue.
Well, according to the Telegraph in the UK, Ad Sprang got photos of the great blue heron's cousin, the grey heron getting a rabbit. Not just a wild rabbit, a domestic looking rabbit.
This is the final photo...as you can make out from the heron's bulge, this did not end well for the rabbit. I'm not going to post all Al Sprang's photos here in the blog, there's just too much of a conflict of interest between the bunny lovers who read my blog and the birders. Just follow this link...Labels: Holy Crap
posted by birdchick at 4:54 PM
17 Comments:
I also find myself torn between "HOLY CRAP How COOL is THAT?" and horror for the poor cute little bunny. I guess it's important to accept that nature isn't always pretty...but it never fails to amaze me in some new way.
OMG! That's just gross, but, my 14-year old son and I had to go to the webpage that showed all the pics. I saw a Blue Heron attack and eat a baby duckling before. That's when I understood that they eat fish and geckos, that makes them carnivores! Ducks=meat. Sad day in my childhood!
I remember seeing a heron swallow a fish and watching the fish's shape descend down it's throat. I'm kind of glad those shots did't make it into the series.
WOW! The birds are amazing. We didn't forget they were dinosaurs once right? I love the line from Jurrasic Park about the velocoraptors.
I certianly feel for the bunny; but nature is nothing if not surprising and many times; ruthless.
Great photos! What's up with a black rabbit in the wild? Is that normal in the Netherlands?
Oh hey, that was me above, not Chelsey. Two accounts, one computer. Doh!
I saw herons (or some type of bird that looks like a heron) doing this type of thing in a field in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco just this past May. I was sitting reading and saw a big bird standing there. First, I thought it was injured because even tho there was a fair amount of foot and auto traffic somewhat nearby, it just hung out and walked around a bit. After 20-30 minutes or so, another heron flew in and the first heron flew off. I then was reading and distractedly watching the second heron when I noticed it slowly and sneakily move forward and dart its head and grab something. I could see that it had something small and fuzzy which it then seemed to drop and grab a few times and finally swallow. It was at this point that I noticed little holes all around. It was apparent that the birds were hunting some kind of small gopher/rodent. I thought that it was very bizarre and that someone should tell some biologist or ornithologist and then I quickly forgot about it until I saw this. Anyway, I'll bet you can go see this today in Golden Gate Park and I could probably figure out the field it happened in if I saw a map.
During my Master's research, I would witness Great Blue Herons hunting gophers. They would stand and wait for a little guy to come up. This was at a Navy base in Corpus Christi, TX.
Chelsey, it's definitely not a normal wild rabbit. But sometimes abandoned pet rabbits survive and will breed with wild rabbits as well.
I'm probably reading too much into this, but the article seems to suggest that the heron purposefully tried to drown the rabbit before eating it. Doesn't that seem like really sophisticated behavior, to recognize an air-breathing animal that could be drowned as opposed to fish and other things that could easily withstand being held under water?
Anonymous,
It's not out of the realm of possibility for a heron to drown something. Birds can figure that out, they may not know the science behind what they are doing, but they will notice things like, "Hey, I had trouble getting this not to move on land, but it will stop moving a lot quicker if I hold it in the water."
I did a quick check of Birds of North America Online and found this under Food Habits:
"Most prey swallowed whole. Small mammals sometimes wetted before swallowing (Peifer 1979, but see Bayer 1981a)."
So, maybe putting the rabbit in the water was maybe to just get it wet and make it easier to swallow. However, the resulted drowning of the rabbit was a bonus--it's a heck of a lot easier to swallow if it's not moving.
I've seen crows take lizards and after beating the crap outta them on the pavement; they take them over to the gutters where there's water and eat them there after a few dunks.
The first time I saw a Great Blue Heron eating a Cotton Hispid Rat it did the same exact thing, drowning it under the water or wetting it, like you said.
Herons will eat almost anything. Thanks for sharing the photos!
Ouch! That looks like my daughters rabbit, Thumper.
http://birdsnsuch.blogspot.com/2008/10/thumper.html
UGH!!! we are horrified. We love birds, not so much this bird though. We love buns too much to look any further...
Andrewbun & Mom
Wow this reminded me of something I saw when I was a kid. I must have been about 10 when I saw a pelican eat a pigeon in a park in London. I'll never forgot the sight of the pigeon's wings sticking out on either side of the pelican's beak.
I'd like to suggest some speculation on these pix.
I shoop pictures all the time and the majority of these looked shooped. The bunny is not shown inside the mouth, but behind or infront of it. I don't think it's an optical illusion.
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