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Friday 11 March 2011

Fishing Heron

I always admire the the patience of herons. When they are fishing, they often wait patiently for their preys to come, sometimes it can take a couple of hours.  Although a large number of herons are often around Hong Kong in the winter, they seem to be standing by the river forever motionless. I often wished that  I could witness a successful hunt.



My luck changed a few days ago when I saw a juvenile Black-capped Night Heron fishing in a river.


 
The tide was going out that day and the Heron was standing on a shallow dam waiting for the passing fish.




Suddenly, it saw a fish



Within seconds, the fish was down the heron’s throat!







The efficiency was amazing!

8 comments:

Joe Beale said...

Great photos, and a good story! I always enjoy reading your posts. I have some images from a brief visit to Taiwan last year that I might put up sometime, this Night Heron reminds me.

By the way, I hope you don't have any bad news regarding friends or family caught up in the Japan tsunami, hopefully the worst of it is over now and nowhere else will be affected too much. I think HK is safe, hope so. All the best.

John Holmes said...

Those Night Herons certainly get their fish swallowed quickly...

rainfield61 said...

But then you are as patient as the heron too.

Phil Slade said...

Like those heron pictures a lot. It looks more than a bit like Striated Heron I saw recently in Egypt (pics on my blog). But there are quite a lot of those similar small herons.

Chris said...

Excellent observation and sequence. They are so good at fishing that's it is sometime amazing to observe them!

Sérgio Pontes said...

He is very nice

Shifan said...

Hi
Nice shot and beautiful picture.

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Unknown said...

Lovely series of the Heron in action.
Congrats :-)