Watch: Heron eats Central Park rat

Originally published at: Watch: Heron eats Central Park rat | Boing Boing

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I’ve been wondering about this. I’ve been noticing Egrets or Cranes standing in fields recently, in some decent numbers. I had always thought this family of birds was fish eaters, but I suppose if they are standing in fields they are probably looking for rodents and maybe frogs or snakes or large insects.

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From my obsevation, it seems a great blue heron will attempt to eat anything it thinks it can swallow.

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We have a large grey heron breeding colony here and them buggers eat anything. Fish and frogs, sure but also duckling, goslings, young hares, field mice…

Never seen one do a rat but it doesn’t surprise me at all

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Might not bode well if they eat a poisoned rat. The Central Park red tail hawk, “Pale Male” learned to just eat pigeons and ignore the rats.

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Remi?

REMI?

Ratatouille-remy2

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At this park I take my GF to so she can Pokemon, there is this tree that had 6 or 7 roosting great blue heron families.

I was able to take my telescope one time and watch them. Each nest had two babies in it, that were rather big, but still not ready to fly. The parents may have been there, some were sleeping it looked like. Pretty neat, we are going to watch them again next year!

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Am I the only one that thought of the Lady and the Tramp spaghetti scene?

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I was told a story at the weekend of one eating three ducklings from the same family in quick succession.

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They’re conveniently waddling in a row, like fuzzy sushi.

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not actually a CORRECTION:

“One of North America’s Largest Avian Dinosaurs Eats Central Park Rat”

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I’d imagine a “Fuzzy Sushi” restaurant would go out of business really quickly.

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Man I’d be worried about that fella gnawing his way out!!

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Heron was noted saying it tastes like pizza.

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Aw, I like rats. It’s always hard to acknowledge that the non-pet ones are a real problem :frowning:

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Now, can we teach it to eat squirrels?

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Yeah I was thinking of this as well. Does the rat suffocate too quickly? I’d think that thing would frenzy and try clawing its way out

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The Central Park rat got off lightly compared to this unlucky one from Amsterdam:Heron kills and eats a rat - Subscribe - Amsterdam 2016 - YouTube

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A friend of mine had a monitor lizard which liked to swallow mice whole. They suffocate pretty quickly, maybe 15 seconds. I am assuming rats are similar, especially one being out of breath from swimming.

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