[MASSBIRD] Great blue heron catching fish while a mink ran across the path. Photos. Coyote, Great Meadows Concord 12/30/10
Michael Kolodny
I was at Great Meadows in Concord on 12/30/10 and took the photographs
listed below. The photos are at: http://o10cpcs.wordpress.com (The archive
index is in the right margin.)
Birds:
Great Blue Heron - catching fish.
Birds seen but no photos posted:
Black capped chickadee
Gold finches
American crows
Slate-colored junco
Red-tailed hawks (2)
Other Photographs:
Mink
Coyote
Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary, Natick 12/28/10
Leaf circle
Landscape
Just after I started skiing down the trail at Great Meadows another visitor
who was walking the other way pointed out to me a coyote on one of the
muskrat mounds at the far end of the frozen over upper impoundment. He
explained that the coyote is there every morning (I assume he meant when the
impoundment is frozen) and the best viewing is from the tower. While I was
taking pictures, the coyote walked off into the reeds when the sun rose high
enough to light up the surface of the ice on the upper impoundment.
I skied around to the end of the refuge by the upper impoundment and then
circled around the lower impoundment stopping to taking a few photographs of
landscapes and of some of the familiar birds there this time of year. When I
got back to the parking lot I left my skis and walked to the boat ramp
again. I usually make a second pass to the boat ramp because I often find
interesting subjects to photograph in mid-morning that aren't there at dawn
when I first arrive, but this day in particular I wanted to look for a lens
cap I had lost.
As I was walking down the trail, someone ahead of me pointed out a great
blue heron. It was standing in a gap in the ice in the upper impoundment
across the trail from the foot bridge. The heron was fairly sedate - it
didn't seem to mind people walking across the foot bridge. Maybe it was
because of the heavy meal it had been having. It caught two fish just while
I was photographing it. Another heronator. Several people walked by, but
none of them waited to watch the heron catch fish.
The heron immediately gulped down the first fish I saw it catch, but the
second gave it a bit of trouble. The heron caught that fish by the tail and
it dangled down from the birds bill. As the fish thrashed back and forth
rapidly, the heron's head vibrated with every thrash of the fish. Eventually
the heron put the fish on the ground and got a better grip on it and then
swallowed it down.
After the heron caught the first fish I saw something poking it's head out
from the reeds but I didn't get a photograph of it then. I suspected it was
the mink that I've seen between the two impoundments a few times since last
summer. I've only seen it as it scurried across the path, which takes just a
second or two so I never had time to photograph it. (In fact I used to walk
with my camera mounted on my tripod but I stopped doing that because holding
the camera in my hands would give me a better chance to get a photograph of
that mink.) Now, the mink seemed to be wary of something and withdrew back
into the reeds.
When the heron was coping with the second fish, the mink came entirely out
of the reeds and ran across the trail and under the foot bridge. I don't
know what caused the mink to hesitate like that. Was it me or the heron? Did
it wait for the heron to become occupied with a fish before it felt safe to
come out in the open? Whatever it's concerns, it could have walked through
the reeds along the side of the trail and crossed the somewhere else. Was it
hanging around the heron for some particular reason - looking for scraps or
hoping to steal a fish? Was it watching me take photographs out of
curiosity?
I took a lot of pictures of the heron, the fish, and the mink so I made
three posts on my blog from them. The mink is in the third post.
I didn't find my lens cap on the trail but when I got back to the parking
lot I found that someone had placed it on the gate at the start of the
trail.
Last Tuesday, 12/28/10, I went to Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary in Natick. It
was a little tiresome walking though the snow - which is why I brought my
skis to Great Meadows on Thursday. (I have snow shoes but I find that skiing
is less strenuous.) I posted a couple of photographs from the trip to
Broadmoor at the same link as the pictures from Great Meadows.
At one point on the trail at Broadmoor I saw a circle in the snow several
inches across with a small hole in the center. It was sort of like what a
super large ski pole might have made. I puzzled over what could have made it
until I found (and photographed) another circle with the object that formed
it still in place. It was made by a leaf. The stem was curved so that it
stuck into the snow at the center of a circle which the leaf described as it
was blown around by the wind.
Within the first few minutes of my walk at Broadmoor, I noticed that I had
lost one set of the cleats I strap on my boots when it's snowy or icy. I
backtracked to find it, which I often have to do when I wear them, but it
seemed to have vanished into the snow. This was early in the morning so I
didn't think anyone else would have found them. At the end of my walk, when
I got back to the visitor center, I found my cleats on top of a post near
the start of the trail (like my lens cap would be two days later at Great
Meadows). Someone had found them and left them there for their owner to
reclaim.
Michael Kolodny
Framingham, MA
m_ko...@phreego.com
My other nature photography blog is at: http://o3cpcs.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/sightings_blog