A Big Hazard, and A Heron Swallowing a Fish

Time had come into being, death, birth, and the killing and eating of other living beings, for the perservation of life.          Joseph Campbell 

Before I get to the hazard, I'm going to embed a slideshow of some photos that I took of a heron swallowing a fish. A BIG fish. You can follow it all the way down the throat. If you are squeamish about such stuff that should weed out all the people that don't want to see the BIG HAZARD. Following that, I am wrapping up my spring photos with some cuter, lighter stuff.


                    
Now for the HAZARD--my closest encounter with a water moccasin.  This actually came after my encounter with the heron catching the big fish (carp?) or I might have been a bit more cautious about sitting in the grass taking the photos.

It looked reasonably lazy, so I did get a bit of a closer look.  I am not sure it was a great idea. 

Not a candidate for National Geographic Publication, but it did make an impression on me.

Now for some of the lighter, cuter photos.  First off, I found some nesting herons on an island in the Tennessee River.  Believe me, I was in the relative safety of a boat.  I am more nervous about coming close to a nesting heron than I am a water moccasin.  They nest in groups (it makes for easier babysitting and safety).  Luckily part of the group picked a dead branch, so I had easy photographic access to one part of this.  The nest was probably twenty five feet off the ground.

 This is a photo for Mother's Day-

For a week or two I was following the family of wood ducks in Audubon Park.  I am not much of a bird identification person, but I had to know what these things were, as I knew they weren't the garden variety of mallard, or mixture that I usually see in urban parks.  And cute?  Oh my, they are really CUTE!  The male is extremely colorful, hard to resist for a female wood duck. 


 Learning to Fly!

Spring has been an adventure for sure.  I am sending this blog off to the heat of summer with a nice cool photo of a Seattle spring.  Yes, I was in Seattle for a week.  Even though a got a lot of photos of herons in Seattle, I think we need a change of pace.