Seafood manners
June 24, 2010 (Thursday)
Yesterday I wrote about a Yellow-Crowned Night-Heron that I saw down the street. There are many, many kinds of Herons, but I am not familiar with them and certainly not qualified to give any kind of scientific explanation about birds of any kind. I am not a bird watcher, except in the sense that I occasionally enjoy watching them in the yard. I also enjoy seeing them in the wild, in the bays of Texas and other states. I’m just a casual observer, not a serious one.
I saw a Great Blue Heron feeding one day. It was quite a sight. He was standing in shallow water not far from the shore, and suddenly, like lightning, his head plunged into the water and pulled out a fish. He didn’t harpoon the fish; his bill functioned like tongs as he brought it up. Then that smart bird turned toward the shore and walked to the land nearby. I have seen videos of them dropping the fish on the ground to reposition it, but this bird never dropped his. He stretched out his neck with the fish in his bill and began bouncing the fish around in his bill. He never dropped it. The position of the fish changed so that the head of the fish was poised to swim down the long neck head-first. When it was just like he wanted it, the heron swallowed the fish whole. He then walked back into the water, sipping a little of it as he went, presumably just as we do when we are eating and occasionally sipping our drink. The last I saw of him, he was back in the water, awaiting his next meal.
If you want to see this in a video, just visit your trusty internet and search for one. You’ll find several right away. Better still, if you live in Rockport, just go to the water’s edge and see the live show.