Basically the gullet is the passage taken by food and drink through a bird's throat. In the case of the Great Blue Heron that trip down the gullet is not only long, but not always a slam dunk. They've been known to choke to death trying to get too large a fish down the hatch.
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Now if you'll excuse me an aside: :)
I don’t recall ever having been asked what I thought a bird was--I mean during the actual act of birding. Looking around the lagoon a bit Sunday morning though (apparently encouraged by my bird-nerd appearance) a man asked me if I could identify the big blue bird across the way. Indeed I could. :) As things often seem to go, it was none other than the star of this weekend's blog: a Great Blue Heron.
NEW! [Click here to see the ebird interactive location page for Great Blue Heron]