Well, this is one way to handle New York City's rodent problem. A blue heron was seen devouring an enormous rat in Central Park, and the whole thing was caught on video.
The footage was captured by a Reddit user who posted it to the "Hardcore Nature" subreddit. As the poster explains, they were in Central Park by the Harlem Meer doing yoga with a friend on Saturday when about 10 feet away was "a great big blue heron, just casually being all dinosaurian."
"Soon we realized it was hunting a huge rat. The battle did not go well for the rat, and the process was not a sight for the faint of heart," the user wrote. "The rat fought hard and valiantly for its life, but was mortally wounded by the heron’s beak, and then held by its neck and shook till it asphyxiated."
By the point they began filming "the blue heron devouring the rat whole, like a snake would," the poor rodent was (perhaps thankfully) already deceased. In the three-minute-long video, the majestic bird can be seen holding the limp rat in its beak, before swallowing the whole animal in a few gulps nearly two minutes in.
Near the end, the outline of the rat can be seen protruding from the bird's neck, while the tail still stuck out of its beak.
Central Park Blue Heron Devours City Rat Whole
by u/Particular-Neat-3328 in HardcoreNature
While rodents may not necessarily be the first choice of meal for a blue heron, according to the National Audubon Society, the birds' diets are "highly variable and adaptable." Blue herons eat mostly fish, but will also chow down on frogs, salamanders, turtles, snakes, insects, other smaller birds, and yes, even rodents.
As one commenter succinctly noted: "Send this bird to the subway stations, PLEASE!"
