{"id":11496,"date":"2014-09-01T08:33:27","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T15:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=11496"},"modified":"2014-09-01T09:58:53","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T16:58:53","slug":"herons-good-minute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=11496","title":{"rendered":"Heron&#8217;s good minute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I have sought shots such as these for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It is surprising that in all the time I have spent watching\u00a0the Great Blue Heron hunt for fish, I had\u00a0not seen it catch and eat one (although, I had\u00a0seen one catch a <a title=\"Vole begone\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=8379\">vole<\/a>). In under\u00a0a minute yesterday morning,\u00a0I watched a heron alight, catch a fish, and swallow it. That one\u00a0meal might sate it for days.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I had wandered out with my camera to watch a kingfisher, but that delight\u00a0was quickly eclipsed when a juvenile heron\u00a0landed in front of me and immediately reached for something in the shallows.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11499\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/heronfish140831ds.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It retrieved a Large-scale Sucker. However, the fish, being athwart the bill, was not aligned for swallowing.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11499\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/heronfish140831as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So, the fish was dropped and picked up again near the head. The\u00a0imbalance caused the body of the fish to rotate more in line with the heron&#8217;s bill.\u00a0<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11498\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/heronfish140831bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>That being done, the whole fish quickly vanished down the gullet.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11500\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/heronfish140831cs3.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I have sought shots such as these for years.\u00a0 It is surprising that in all the time I have spent watching\u00a0the Great Blue Heron hunt for fish, I had\u00a0not seen it catch and eat one (although, I had\u00a0seen one &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=11496\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-fish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11496"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11529,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11496\/revisions\/11529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}