Beautiful Elegant Honking Predator

No question that at first glance the Great Blue Heron seems an elegant bird, a graceful flapper, a stately stander. But when it opens its trap and emits a guttural honk as if its sinuses were plugged, you can’t help but be jarred.

This same thing of beauty is a relentless and ruthless hunter that will stand still until a fish, instinctively trying to hide, seeks the heron’s silhouette of shade. Then – whap – the bird strikes and, if successful, shakes the fight out its prey before gulping it down its gullet whole.

Put both these incongruities together – the beautiful elegant honking predator – and you gain a glimpse into the cove’s ongoing territorial squabble between two herons, one larger than the other, battling over feeding rights to the cove.

I’ve been noticing the smaller bird chased away on several occasions this summer, but, one late afternoon this week, the level of drama heightened when the smaller of the two floated in, landing on a clump of lilies in front of my cottage, giving me a front-row seat.

A minute later, the larger heron, starting its flight from the other side of the lake, gracefully flapped in, and began its dry-cough honking as it approached the intruder. The smaller heron flew away, and the larger heron, instead of staying to fish, returned on the same flight path across the lake, having successfully protected, from more than a quarter mile away, its feeding ground.

Herry The Heron Eats Crappie

I’ve been trying to get a good shot of a great blue heron catching or feeding on a fish. At least one of these shy and solitary birds has been flying in and out of the cove since this morning.

However, I've either run out of memory waiting for the right photo, or the bird turns his back on me, or he steps out of range, or some noise frightens the bird and he flees the cove. He’s even chased a smaller heron from his territory, but no luck getting the right shot, until it started pouring rain.

I looked out the window during the high point of the storm -- lightening, thunder, high winds -- and here comes Herry the Heron gracefully flapping into the cove, and choosing a spot very favorable to my photographing him from the front picture window.

Perfect time to hunt, too: no motor boats, no joggers, no golf carts or ATVs racing along the shore. Just loud claps of thunder, which, oddly, don’t bother him.

Wish I could say I got the perfect photo of him capturing a fish, but, again, my memory card was full. I even thought I had the best shot of the day, a long view of the lake, with a zoom into the heron.

So I uploaded the video onto my computer, emptied the card, and went back to the picture window. As I did, Herry plunged into the lilies. By the time my camera was positioned, the heron was trying to subdue and gulp down a good size crappie, as shown above.