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Now I have recorded quite a few feeding frenzy's here at the nest in the year plus that I had been recording it, but this was the first time I was lucky enough to be here when two of the siblings got into a tug of war over one of the scraps, and what a war it was.
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Now I have recorded quite a few feeding frenzy's here at the nest in the year plus that I had been recording it, but this was the first time I was lucky enough to be here when two of the siblings got into a tug of war over one of the scraps, and what a war it was.

DSC_0329 food fight

summerStaten IslandClove LakesGreat blue heronbirdsnatureheronsNYCsld3

  • DSC_9243 coming in for a landing
  • DSC_9244 coming in for a landing
  • DSC_9245 coming in for a landing
  • DSC_9249 coming in for a landing
  • The wind kicked up all afternoon, and the parents really had to navigate the strong air currents to take off and land with. After recording this parent taking off after feeding its young ones, I had now been here for 7 hours, gotten all the different type of shots I was aiming for, and it was time for me to pack up my gear and head home for a nice dinner.
  • DSC_9307 heron's nest
  • DSC_9308 heron's nest
  • DSC_9331 Great White Heron
  • Today is the 4th of July and as I never work paid holidays (of which we get few), I was off. So I chose to use it to go back out and check in on our famous family of herons out at the lake (famous to the regular visitors of Clove Lake that is).<br /> <br /> Now I was still 2 weeks away from editing the shots that I took on my last visit to the nest sight on the 20th of last month, so as of yet I still hadn't realized that one of the 4 chicks had died. Nor did I have any knowledge that by visiting the nest on the 20th I had inadvertently picked the day that the doomed chick actually fell out of the nest (probably weak from hunger). And had at the very least recorded a visual record of the time frame for its death.<br /> <br /> But as of now I was oblivious to all that, and assumed all 4 chicks were alive, but I noticed only 3 in the nest. As the leaves around the nest had grown quite dense over the last few months and that it was a big nest, I surmised it was certainly possible that the 4th chick was laying low under cover. And after a few hours of still only seeing 3 started wondering if the 4th one had flown away. Though that seemed highly unlikely, as big as they had become, none of the chicks should have been big enough to fly yet.<br /> <br /> So when the many regulars stopped to ask me how they were doing and how many chicks I saw, I told them they were all well and growing quite big, but that for some reason there was almost certainly now just 3 in the nest, and only speculated about what happened to the 4th. Who knew at the time my camera had recorded the answer to the missing 4th chick, and was just waiting for me to edit the shots to reveal the answer.<br /> <br /> In the mean time the 3 that remained all looked in great shape and were all active and alert, and looked like they would be leaving the nest to explore the lake soon, awesome!
  • DSC_0036 heron's nest
  • Spread your wings and fly
  • DSC_0113 heron's nest
  • DSC_9927 heron's nest
  • DSC_0063 heron's nest
  • DSC_0049 heron's nest
  • DSC_0282 heron's nest
  • DSC_0298 food fight
  • Now I have recorded quite a few feeding frenzy's here at the nest in the year plus that I had been recording it, but this was the first time I was lucky enough to be here when two of the siblings got into a tug of war over one of the scraps, and what a war it was.
  • Not an uncommon occurrence, after regurgitating food into the chicks mouths for several minutes, sometimes some food was left at the bottom of the nest. While the parent would fly off one of the chicks would gobble up the left over scraps. But this time two of the chicks decided that they wanted this tasty morsel, and weren't willing to concede the hunk of flesh to its sibling.
  • DSC_0373 food fight
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