Great Blue Herons’ plumage patterns, especially along their long necks, are a form of ‘disruptive coloration’: Distinctive designs such as stripes and\or spots that break up the animal’s outline. For some species this is more critical than ‘concealing coloration’ because they live in a variety of habitats with a variety of background colors making it […]
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Biomimicry: Learning from and emulating nature’s forms, processes, and ecosystems to create solutions for problems in the human-made world. There are many examples of biomimicry in practice, e.g., sharkskin and antifouling ship hulls, termite mounds and efficient building ventilation, humpback whale fins and low drag wind turbine blades, burdock plant burrs and Velcro, ,,, the […]
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Great Blue Herons are favorites of mine. They are tough & adaptive survivors. They have survived everything we have thrown at them. They even seem to take sweet revenge by raiding urban koi ponds and in an infamous case here in metro-Atlanta stealing trout off the lines of fishermen on the Chattahoochee River. But just […]
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That’s what comes to my mind each time I see a Great Blue Heron fly, especially when coming in for a landing. They are truly gangly – 4.5 to 5.5 lbs, 3.5′ to 4.5′ tall, and with a 5.5′ to 6.5′ wingspan. Gangly and beautiful in a dinosaurs-are-still-with-us kind of way. They are a great […]
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