Fishing Heron

23 dramatic minutes marking the end of my biggest goldfish.

The week before this guy already had caught another huge fish, struggeling to gulp it down. This time I got lucky and had a better camera position - although not the best of cameras.

It nevertheless documents the desperation of that gorgeous bird. Again it was frost that night and still waters would be frozen. Our garden is small as is the pond, but the little stram leaves the water open. We have cats and an adjacent park with people traffic, but still this bird jumped several times into this tiny pond even stayed for a bit in it once before climbing out to start the next attack. I didn't even know that there were still fish in it, since they had hidden so well during those past days after the first visit.

The heron already struggled with the first fish and took it away when one of our cats left by the catflap. This fish was even bigger and I was worried that he might abandon the catch, leaving the fish having died in vain. My worries however were unfounded: Two Megpies started harassing the fisherman who kept his cool and worked hard on spiking the poor victim with his beak over and over again - I guess to make the meet tender so it might fit better.

Eventually after about 20 minutes the fish vanished down the head leaving it in a fish shape for a while. The poor bloke surely seemed to struggle have it sliding down the throat, still closely observed by the Megpies. Then after a few minutes he took a sip of water he took of and gave the Maggie a good scare.

You can adjust the speed of the slide show by hovering the mouse curser over the top of the image which will display a bar to navigate the show. Default is 5 seconds, I however find that 3 seconds is a good speed to watch the series.

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