@Beverly Rhame Heh. Herons are well known for eating odd things. Occasionally, it's even fatal - herons have been found choked to death on stickleback fish.
Was thinking the same .....How a meal like this even travels through the oesophagus ; the stomach acids of some of these birds are unbelievable , even able to disolve bone . While some other birds like owls cough up boney and fur remains .
With shorebirds (grebes, herons, cormorants, gulls, terns, kingfishers, crows, jays, swallows, pelicans) an most birds of prey, indigestible solid remains of their prey, such as hair, feathers and bones, are formed into a ball called a pellet in the gizzard. This pellet is then ejected. This process is called 'casting a pellet'. Such pellets are common to all birds of prey that swallow their food whole, including owls, hawks and eagles.
It's the human equivalent of eating a whole tin of beans - without opening the tin first! (I just hope this bird isn't flying over me when the shell comes out again!)
I once caught some sort of freaky boney/spiny catfish in the Gulf with what appeared to be an exoskeleton full of spikes. Ugliest thing I ever saw aside from my ex. Tossed it on the pier, then a gray heron who I had already fed like 15 perch was somehow still intrigued. He walked around it, took a few looks at it, then stabbed it to death about 10 times, occasionally having to pry his beak out of the wood of the pier. Once it stopped moving, he took it right down, spines and all. Gulp.
After doing a little research and watching some other videos here on TH-cam, I've learned that they'll eat just about anything. Their strong stomach acid allows them to digest just about anything.
These birds are amazing! I saw one in our backyard that had a cotton mouth snake in its beak about 3 foot long. He tossed it in the air opened his mouth and it slid right down the herons throat, then slithered back out! Ewww
These things have practically wiped out the bullfrog population where I live . They can stand like a statue for several minutes and the bullfrogs just swim right up to them .
Great video. I think the heron was thinking that the shell was going to get softer and softer the more it dunked it in the water. I wonder if it "kept it down"? I mean, that's got to take a few days to digest!
The beak is made for stabbing, not crushing. The endless mouthing must be to gauge the width of an object that won’t compress. The bird has probably had choking experiences in the past. It drinks water before and after the swallow, perhaps for lubrication.
Heron: I remember mom told me to wash your food at least 100 times before you eat it. Turtle: Yeah you idiotic bird, keep throwing me in the water cause that's my habitat! Turtle: Oh crap! There goes my life!
I guess the heron will be having the hardest poop of all time. It would be funny if the heron flies over the bald head of an idiot bully and poops a hard turtle shell from its anus knocking out the bully.
I believe it's dead it looks bloated. Its legs are straight and its tail is straight. I'm not a know-it-all but I believe that heron would have had a hard time if that turtle was alive it's got some serious Claws and they can bite like hell just saying. But on the other hand I seen one along the river with a groundhog in his beak I don't know if it killed it or found it but it sure had it
Yeah, he finally got him, but maybe that's a meal he should have passed up. It looks like he's having a bit of a time getting it all the way down his throat. Those bastards will try to eat anything, I saw another video where one of these things was trying to eat a full grown capybara, lol! Wonder if they would actually try to eat a human? Correction, it was not a "Heron" that tried to eat the Capybara, it was actually a Pelican, but same concept! I'm sure the Heron would have given it the old college try also.
If you don't mind, what camera and lens/zoom setting were you using to take this? It's very good and excellent depth of field [focus] in this video. Or was it just 'cropped' from a wider image? Beautiful, either way. Thank you for this --- quite a learning experience.
That turtle probably once in its stomach started freaking out majorly and started biting or clawing trying to get out, the heron didnt damage its head so the turtle was still alive and biting, thats why it had such trouble trying to swallow it, it mustve kept biting its throat when it tried to swallow it
The turtle was long dead before being swallowed. If it were alive, the Herons acid-like stomach juices would have paralyzed it pretty quickly! Thanks for watching!
With shorebirds (grebes, herons, cormorants, gulls, terns, kingfishers, crows, jays, swallows, pelicans) an most birds of prey, indigestible solid remains of their prey, such as hair, feathers and bones, are formed into a ball called a pellet in the gizzard. This pellet is then ejected. This process is called 'casting a pellet'. Such pellets are common to all birds of prey that swallow their food whole, including owls, hawks and eagles.
A few years ago I saw a photo of a dead gull and rodent where it was evident from the position of the rodent that the gull had eaten a live rodent and the rodent had tried to tunnel his way out of the gull.
Bruzote, In this case, it looks like the turtle is already dead, but I would imagine that if still alive, the turtle could conceivably cause a lot of internal damage, even fatal, to the heron. I am quite surprised that sharp edges of the turtle's carapace didn't damage the heron's esophagus or stomach.
Great birds, I love watching them. Glad they're not 30 ft tall!
Heron: Let me just wash that down with a lil sip of water...
Waitress, I'll have a bowl of turtle soup and make it snappy.
And a side of melted butter cause that thing ain't going down 😨
🤣🤣🤣
Can you repeat that? I'm not sure I was heron you correctly.
@@toonamife,
Better bring me a big bottle of meat tenderizer! 😅
that's gonna hurt in the morning
🤣
Lol
What I was thinking... 😆 😆🤣
Not as much as the morning after eating my aunty's chilli shrimp when I was a teenager.
@@pauljordan4452 excellent anal-ogy
Incredible photography - thanks for your patience - so very interesting!
Heron: this is hard, maybe the water...
Water: no
I am a pharmacist and some people tell me “can I have the medicine in liquid form because I can’t swallow the pill” They need to watch this video.
What and learn how to take 12 minutes to swallow something! Nah - lets have the liquid form!
😅😂🤣
It takes some time for people who aren’t used to swallowing pills.
Here in the midwest, herons and snapping turtles eat the same creatures with the same ambush tactic, from different sides -above and below.
I'm amazed that this heron could digest a whole turtle shell? fascinating..
Turtle: you will never eat me give it up.
Heron: I always get what I want for dinner. And you will be my dinner!!
"If it fits I shits"
If those birds were twice their size I'd be afraid to leave my house for fear one could be planing to make a snack out of me.
I'm sure someone has done a PhD on Heron-poop
Rinse thoroughly before swallowing.
The heron won't actually digest the shell nor will he pass it. He'll just hork it up later - like hawks, herons can cast pellets.
@Beverly Rhame Heh. Herons are well known for eating odd things. Occasionally, it's even fatal - herons have been found choked to death on stickleback fish.
@Beverly Rhame they aren't greedy they are wild animals! They don't know any better!
surely the heron cant digest that shell? which is going to cause it some big problems when it goes to take a dump the next morning
Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside
They must have some strong stomach juices to dissolve that shell.
Was thinking the same .....How a meal like this even travels through the oesophagus ; the stomach acids of some of these birds are unbelievable , even able to disolve bone .
While some other birds like owls cough up boney and fur remains .
With shorebirds (grebes, herons, cormorants, gulls, terns, kingfishers, crows, jays, swallows, pelicans) an most birds of prey, indigestible solid remains of their prey, such as hair, feathers and bones, are formed into a ball called a pellet in the gizzard. This pellet is then ejected. This process is called 'casting a pellet'. Such pellets are common to all birds of prey that swallow their food whole, including owls, hawks and eagles.
@@MacroX1231 Thanks . One exception being the "bearded vulture" able to disolve solid bone .
MacroX1231 Thanks for sharing.
EVERYBODY look out there's a hard turtle shell falling from some birds ass.
Blue Heron blues:
I love snapping turtles...
Snapping turtle's what I eat...
I nibble on they heads..
And, they tiny feet.
Now sing that with a nasal growl. That's a heron voice.
The water in the lake serves as dipping sauce.
More as a lubricant
He looked at the camera man like.. you next😂
1:24
If the cameraman is 6 feet or taller, he too is a Heron. A nickname for tall people.
Croak! 😊
"Why won't this soften up!" *dip*
Ouch... This is for sure very painful for both animals...
It's the human equivalent of eating a whole tin of beans - without opening the tin first! (I just hope this bird isn't flying over me when the shell comes out again!)
Funny!!!!
Can they even fly?
@@alejandroperez5368 Yes
Hey blue heron dunking ain't gonna make the turtle soft like a donut
Catching the prey - 3 secs
Planning how to swallow it - 13 mins
The Great Blue Heron's mother would be saying... "Stop playing with your food, junior!"
This is the bird equivalent of "playing with your food".
Wow! Herons really eats everything! Great video!
That shell is going to crash through a windshield.
I feel like when the heron was taking a shit it was like, " OH ITS A BIG ONE"
I once caught some sort of freaky boney/spiny catfish in the Gulf with what appeared to be an exoskeleton full of spikes. Ugliest thing I ever saw aside from my ex. Tossed it on the pier, then a gray heron who I had already fed like 15 perch was somehow still intrigued. He walked around it, took a few looks at it, then stabbed it to death about 10 times, occasionally having to pry his beak out of the wood of the pier. Once it stopped moving, he took it right down, spines and all. Gulp.
After doing a little research and watching some other videos here on TH-cam, I've learned that they'll eat just about anything. Their strong stomach acid allows them to digest just about anything.
Sounds like you caught a sturgeon. Pretty rare fish and a protected fish on the Hudson River in NY
@@SebastianLongMaybe it was an armored catfish?
@@johnhall3570 In the Gulf though? Doesnt sound like a catfish.
Is It stomach can digest turtle shell?
These birds are amazing! I saw one in our backyard that had a cotton mouth snake in its beak about 3 foot long. He tossed it in the air opened his mouth and it slid right down the herons throat, then slithered back out! Ewww
Herons will eat anything they can swallow, small pets included so don’t let them out in the yard.
WTFFF
It was still alive or it just slid out?
They really are magnificent birds.
That's a full 13 mins ordeal for both of them. Digesting the shell will be another story. Superb dude. 😆
Gulps a whole turtle, sips a bit of water...lol
These things have practically wiped out the bullfrog population where I live . They can stand like a statue for several minutes and the bullfrogs just swim right up to them .
What a wonderful video
ow... Great Heron also eats turtle, I haven't seen in person yet, thanks for sharing. 👍
Now i will search "heron eats a rock"
More like heron pooping out turtle.
well his mother never told him to stop playing with his food !! :)- elegantly filmed !!
That's gotta hurt coming back out.
I hope so
If it came back out at all. I wonder if any dead herons were found shortly afterward.
Gross
Lol
It’ll come out like white paint
Great video. I think the heron was thinking that the shell was going to get softer and softer the more it dunked it in the water. I wonder if it "kept it down"? I mean, that's got to take a few days to digest!
Nah they always dip their prey in water. I guess it makes it easier to swallow
The beak is made for stabbing, not crushing. The endless mouthing must be to gauge the width of an object that won’t compress. The bird has probably had choking experiences in the past. It drinks water before and after the swallow, perhaps for lubrication.
It’s a double dipper…
I kept thinking about eating this bird during the vid... Uh, something is wrong with me.
This would be a great commercial for stool softener.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
😀😀
From what I’ve seen so far with Herons is that one’s chances of escaping their clutches is pretty low.
If it took me 15 minutes to eat my prey I’d move on to smaller and softer food lol
maybe she was not so hungry they catch a fish in every 5 minutes
"Heron just had a taste for Turtle that evening", they consume SO many different prey species.
Ever seen the claws on a snapping turtle's feet? You'd want to make damn sure it was dead before swallowing it!
Supersonicf111f 19740186 Yeah like I said I’d move on lol
What a pinnacle of intelligence this heron!
“Totally Radicle, Dude!
Let’s order some pizza.”
- Leonardo
Is heron still alive?
These damn birds take too long to eat!
That was definitely stuck in his throat
what you do not see are his Heron friends egging him on, cheering him to swallow the turtle whole, shell and all
Incredible video quality!
I get the strong feeling this is not a normal food for herons.
Heron: I remember mom told me to wash your food at least 100 times before you eat it.
Turtle: Yeah you idiotic bird, keep throwing me in the water cause that's my habitat!
Turtle: Oh crap! There goes my life!
How did he get the turtles neck
This heron will be constipated for weeks.
ahaha
best comment so far regarding these birds LOL.....
If herons are like owls, they'll just puke out the bones and shells.
I guess the heron will be having the hardest poop of all time. It would be funny if the heron flies over the bald head of an idiot bully and poops a hard turtle shell from its anus knocking out the bully.
@@lil1ice186
You have quite an imagination!
@@lil1ice186
🤣
RIP when that bird takes a dump.
Only needs a little bit of water to wash down that turtle in its intact shell? Amazing!
Snapping turtle is either dead or so dizzy it can’t move.
I believe it's dead it looks bloated. Its legs are straight and its tail is straight. I'm not a know-it-all but I believe that heron would have had a hard time if that turtle was alive it's got some serious Claws and they can bite like hell just saying. But on the other hand I seen one along the river with a groundhog in his beak I don't know if it killed it or found it but it sure had it
Yum yum, Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside
This is how I imagine myself being eaten by a T-rex.
What's stoping the turtle from taring apart the bird from the inside before he suffocate. Snapping turtles have sharp claws
A young snapping turtle to a heron is like a cheeseburger to us
Why is it playing with turtle when its already right time to eat?
I think the Great Blue Heron must have one of the highest kill ratio of any predator!
This guy washed that turtle more than me washing veggies before eating 😂
How does he digest it? It’s gonna hurt coming out.
They also digest bones without any problems
An extended GIF.
Yeah, he finally got him, but maybe that's a meal he should have passed up. It looks like he's having a bit of a time getting it all the way down his throat. Those bastards will try to eat anything, I saw another video where one of these things was trying to eat a full grown capybara, lol! Wonder if they would actually try to eat a human? Correction, it was not a "Heron" that tried to eat the Capybara, it was actually a Pelican, but same concept! I'm sure the Heron would have given it the old college try also.
A baby maybe?
Awesome Footage 👍greeting from NYC
Thanks Roberto. Please visit my bird & wildlife TH-cam channel @ 'Pete Dove Niagara Wildlife' to see more.
Lovely Heron 🥰🥰🥰❤️🙂
Amazing video...thanks
Before being swallowed the turtle lived and died several times.
Amazing footage!
"There's always a bigger fish."
If you don't mind, what camera and lens/zoom setting were you using to take this? It's very good and excellent depth of field [focus] in this video. Or was it just 'cropped' from a wider image? Beautiful, either way. Thank you for this --- quite a learning experience.
Thank You Penboy. I am using a Sony CX190 Handycam. Auto aperture & focus. Tripod. 30x zoom...not sure what that translates to in mm focal length?
@@PETEDOVEPIX Price?
That turtle probably once in its stomach started freaking out majorly and started biting or clawing trying to get out, the heron didnt damage its head so the turtle was still alive and biting, thats why it had such trouble trying to swallow it, it mustve kept biting its throat when it tried to swallow it
The turtle was long dead before being swallowed. If it were alive, the Herons acid-like stomach juices would have paralyzed it pretty quickly! Thanks for watching!
GET IN MA BELLLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
-YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
@@manbo14 -YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Y
Does the heron regurgitates the shell afterwards?
With shorebirds (grebes, herons, cormorants, gulls, terns, kingfishers, crows, jays, swallows, pelicans) an most birds of prey, indigestible solid remains of their prey, such as hair, feathers and bones, are formed into a ball called a pellet in the gizzard. This pellet is then ejected. This process is called 'casting a pellet'. Such pellets are common to all birds of prey that swallow their food whole, including owls, hawks and eagles.
Awesome video and great camara work...👍👍
Thank You Hermes.
Chinese viewers (and pharmacists) are drooling over this video.
How long to digest?
Is there anything these birds won't eat!
Was the heron cracking the shell?
Great camera quality.
Thank You.
Dude must be cursing the fact that he has no hands. It's insanely difficult just to turn the turtle 90 degrees
"is he really gonna eat it?" Skip to the end "holy crap he did it" now I wonder, did he survive the S**t after?
I am stunned that the turtle won't bite the heron inside of its esophagus or gizzard to the point of fatal injury.
A few years ago I saw a photo of a dead gull and rodent where it was evident from the position of the rodent that the gull had eaten a live rodent and the rodent had tried to tunnel his way out of the gull.
Bruzote,
In this case, it looks like the turtle is already dead, but I would imagine that if still alive, the turtle could conceivably cause a lot of internal damage, even fatal, to the heron. I am quite surprised that sharp edges of the turtle's carapace didn't damage the heron's esophagus or stomach.
It was well dead when it was swallowed.
Needs a time stamp for when the deed was done.
Herons often try to eat prey what is to big to swallow it... But this time it has worked!
Даа дружок, черепаха тебе не по зубам!!
please tell me there is a part duce
I know what you all thinking . WHAT ABOUT THE SHELL??
Oh this brings back memories of that one time that I pooped out a turtle shell. Never again!
That is certainly not fast food.