This yr’s video winner within the Audubon Photography Awards has been virtually three years within the making! The video of a Great Blue Heron attempting to find fish underwater was taken by Piper VanOrd, and took precisely 963 days to seize. “One day, one landed across the river, croaking as it glided in, and I wondered what its feet looked like underwater. I was curious, and curiosity is connection. I decided to film at least 15 minutes every morning and evening. I placed GoPros beneath the river’s surface where the herons hunted and set timers to collect footage, hoping to glimpse their talons.” Getting them in body, nonetheless, was a separate problem. Many of us are conversant in the sluggish, methodical strikes of Great Blue Herons, frequent in wetlands throughout North America, however their lightning-fast strikes are a marvel of nature. Their capacity to hurl their spearlike invoice ahead with such pressure is due to the mixture of specialised neck bones and highly effective muscle groups that permit the heron to fold its neck again in a good S-curve, then thrust ahead like the discharge of a coiled spring.