A Fishing Heron

This guy had a lot of nerve. He came right up to the deck at the pond at Sholom Park where a family was throwing pieces of bread to the Koi, which would then thrash about, fighting madly for a bread crumb at the top of the water. The heron watched carefully. When it saw a Koi taking too long at the surface, he lunged and had that Koi down his throat in a matter of seconds. Then, he'd return and wait for another victim to take too long going deep. I've found herons to be very skittish, but I could have reached out and touched this guy1 This reminded me of a video I saw recently where a heron would actually take a piece of bread in its beak, drop it in the water, and wait for a fish to take the bait and then, of course, the fish was history. Obviously, the heron had a functioning brain, for it had carefully planned its fishing procedure. And that fishing procedure was much more successful than just "sit and wait."