Blue Heron, the Great

I perched a print of Audubon's Great Blue Heron atop a tall cabinet, where it loomed above the pristine wilderness of my classroom amidst a plastic melody of faux greenery. Often, I'd ponder this regal waterbird, wondering how the Blue Heron earned its sobriquet, "great." Perhaps being big and blue, like the world, is just it, but I have seen the majesty of that watery wingspan cast a conqueror's shadow over river and grass. Or is its fishing prowess the thing denoted? Ay, and I kept that true angler, stiff and patient like a King, in the realm of my eye-lest it take an unruly student for a slippery catfish, & i'm languid grandeur, descend upon them at last, piercing, beak first like the very picture of Great Blue Death incarnate.