ikarues's Identifications

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)

24 November 2017
Oso Blanco Lodge
Zapata, Zapata County, Texas

This skittish Great Blue Heron feeding near the shoreline of Falcon Lake didn’t allow us to take a better pic except for this one of it in flight.

This bird died by a window collision. My aunt found it and when she described its characteristics I instantly knew what it was. It is very sad to see such a gorgeous bird in this condition, an animal that I wanted to find for so many years. This bird was donated to the bird collection of MZUSP.

Esta ave morreu ao colidir com uma janela. Minha tia encontrou foi quem encontrou e quando ela me descreveu as suas características eu instantaneamente já sabia do que se tratava. Foi muito triste ver uma ave tão linda nestas condições, um animal que eu almejava ver por muitos anos. Essa ave foi doada para a coleção de aves do MZUSP.

I was hoping to see an owl today. But not like this. Just lying dead in the middle of the trail.
I said a prayer that it hadn't suffered and made my apologies for the indignity before photographing it. Gently repositioned it to see if there was any obvious cause of death.
Didn't appear scrawny and overall looked in good condition to my uneducated eye.
(Feathers on the back of the head show as very disturbed in photo 12, but that's just from turning the bird. That shot is to show the bird's size vs. my hiker.)
Moved it off the trail.
Reported to the Central Ohio Owl Project and the county park system.

With Don Fraser; an epically successful chase of several rarities, including our lifer Tricolored Munias (at least 4).

eBird checklist (probably to be hidden at some point in protest of eBird's asinine impending discriminatory and anti-scientific purging of records of hundreds of species of exotic birds from its database): https://ebird.org/checklist/S101320097

Found near a greenhouse at the University of Idaho. Appears to be a bird's foot with a painted talon.

Edit: Mystery Solved! We found the Great Horned Owl dead in a tree 4 February 2022 a few hundred yards away (second photo)