photo by: Jeff Lewis

A great blue heron was found deceased Sunday, May 25, 2025, at Lone Star Lake after becoming entangled in discarded fishing line.

As Jeff Lewis worked on his dock at Lone Star Lake Sunday, something half-submerged in the water caught his eye.

“I kept looking over there, going ‘What is that?'” he said. “So I went over closer, and then I saw what it was”: a great blue heron.

At first he thought it might still be alive, and his heart pounded with the necessity to save it, but then he realized that it was dead, and he saw the reason why: Fishing line that had been stuck to a nearby tree had ensnared the heron, and in an apparent attempt to fly free, the bird had dropped into the lake and eventually drowned.

Lewis found a flat piece of driftwood and used it as a kind of scoop to retrieve the bird’s body. His neighbor cut the fishing line with a buck knife, and the two, along with Lewis’ wife, Susan, held back tears as they examined the body of the limp bird, a brightly colored fishing lure embedded in the crook of its massive blue wing.

photo by: Jeff Lewis

A great blue heron was found deceased Sunday, May 25, 2025, at Lone Star Lake after becoming entangled in discarded fishing line. This photo shows the bright fishing lure embedded in its wing.

It must have been a “miserable, horrible death,” Lewis said, surmising that the bird likely fought against the fishing line for a day or more. “You just know that he struggled. They’re so strong, they’re so majestic, and they’re so powerful.”

Seeing the big herons — a protected migratory species that can stand 4 feet tall, with a wing span of 5 to 6 feet — along with eagles, ospreys, pelicans and other wildlife has been one of the Lewis’ great joys in their 23 years living on the southwest arm of Lone Star Lake.

They also enjoy seeing people boat and fish in the lake.

“I want people to fish out here. I want them to have fun,” Lewis said. But he also wants them to fish responsibly, and that includes retrieving fishing line that has been caught on a tree or other object instead of just snipping it off at the pole and leaving it.

A Kansas game warden who came to retrieve the bird’s body told Lewis that they had seen other incidents where birds became fatally entangled in fishing line. The line can get wrapped around various parts of the birds, impeding their ability to fly and hunt and leading to death by starvation, dehydration or drowning. If a mother bird is killed in such a way, her dependent offspring will also likely die.

Lewis, more sad than angry, doesn’t believe anyone set out to harm the bird; more likely, it was just someone not even giving a second thought to what the abandoned fishing line and hooks could do to wildlife.

“They just think, ‘Oh, I’ll cut it loose; I’ve got another lure,” he said.

Lewis said he has spoken with fishermen about not leaving lines and lures at the lake, and he hopes that this incident of a fish hook fatally catching a beautiful bird will make it real to them how destructive such littering can be.

According to the National Audubon Society, fishing line ensnares thousands of birds every year, leading to serious injuries and death. Even if the line is not attached to a hook, it can still entangle birds, some of whom, like ospreys, commonly use materials like fishing line to build their nests.