The Kokanee salmon are spawning and everyone is happy. Tourists come to watch and others come to feed: ravens, gulls, eagles, vultures, ospreys, otters, bears, mallards, mergansers, rainbow trout, and (the focus of this posting), herons.
There are perhaps a half-dozen Great Blue Herons working the creek. They were stationed on trees, rocks, sandbanks and in the water. Now and then one would fly to a new spot.
A juvenile heron stood in the creek eyeing a Kokanee (reddish smudge, bottom centre).
It lunged. Its bill can be seen under the water approaching the fish.
Success. But, the Kokanee is athwart the bill and must be turned before it can be swallowed.
With a flick of its head, the heron rotates the fish and quickly downs the whole thing.
oh My GoD that’s so amazing! I wonder when he would need his next meal – in a week? My throat chokes up at the sight of the large fish and the skinny neck of the heron.
Grace, when last year, I managed a shot of a heron swallowing a big sucker, I thought that was a substantial meal, but this Kokanee looks even bigger. Incidentally, my most poignant shot of a heron about to swallow prey is of a vole that is alert and staring eyeball to eyeball at the bigger bird. A moment later, it was down the gullet for the vole. I suspect the vole knew what was about to happen. Voles are rather low on the food chain.