One, twice

Almost have time now to get back into the gout of photos (and therefore post subjects,) but first, I have to tackle a photo project courtesy of my brother – if it works out, it will be the weekly topic tomorrow.

But first first, we have a quick shot from another outing to Jordan Lake this past weekend.

great blue heron Ardea herodias in twilight with fish on Jordan Lake
While watching the sunset perform as normal for this area (which means, not terribly well at all,) we saw this great blue heron (Ardea herodias) in the distance strike at a fish. We weren’t even sure it had snagged one, since it wasn’t displaying the normal gulping behavior afterward and we didn’t have the benefit of the long lens perspective seen here, especially since the fish was at times edge-on and at others reflecting the same background colors. But the reason for the absence of gulping was clear in the tighter crop.

great blue heron Ardea herodias holding captured fish by the tail
Fish have to go down head-first, so this was going to require an agile flip/toss to get into the right orientation, and the heron was perhaps waiting until the fish stopped struggling for a moment. It didn’t take very long, and unlike previous observations, this one managed to get it on the first try and the fish disappeared down its gullet in moments.

Which helped, because the air was still down there so the birds were performing poorly for our visit, and the one eagle that appeared and stole a fish from the vultures was too obscured by trees from our vantage to capture any images of. Still, I have more to show from this past week, so don’t give up and go to some idiot’s YouTube channel yet…

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