Spending some much overdue time at a neglected hotspot of mine, the visit produced a few interesting battles. This first bout was the Great Blue Heron in the Gray trunks, and the Double-breasted Cormorant in the Brown trunks. They went to their corners and waited for the bell. They came out fighting! (--over the prime fishing spot known as the whistle.) Right under the heron is a very large drainage pipe which produces high water flow from the backwaters to the river or vise-versa. The swift current caused by the rush creates prime real estate for fishing. The finned ones gather in the eddy to fish for minnows and other teensy food & their predators fish for them. The food chain is pretty short at the whistle. The cormorant approached from the water, dove down for his breakfast, within harpooning range of the herons bill, but the swift swimming skills kept him from ultimate demise. We watched them battle for quite a long time...
The next fight on the card was the Green Herons. Theirs was more like fencing. It was a fast fight, bills clacking eachother, then jumping to a new branch for another angle, clack some more, and eventually fly off.
There were no winners or losers. Every fighter walked away unscathed!
It was a nice place to come back to, but the fishermen of the human kind have discovered this prime piece of wildlife heaven. If they are here, the wildlife aren't, so driving 20 minutes to get here is usually pointess, unless pre-sunrise is an option.
