Herons, and Egrets eating fish and more

I haven't found a heron hunting gophers lately but hopefully soon. Meanwhile, I have made videos of interesting things I have seen.

[@Charlie-B-Barkin]

keep up with the great content

[@cint4408]

I LOVED the grebe footage! Beautiful and endearing. The pipefish was cool too. Who knows what all is in that water. Great work! Thank you!

[@jimzenor9148]

Thanks Cindy. It’s an amazing place and you never know what you will see.

[@WildlifeClips365]

beautiful place

[@PascalKammer.]

nice video

[@robbernath]

Nice video as always, Jim. The heron at the beginning really seemed to struggle with eating its catch. Are that size of fish not normally on that kind of heron's menu? I think when you've featured them before, they typically hunt insects or possibly lizards.

[@jimzenor9148]

Thanks I think that is more typical for these guys but I have videoed them hunting gophers and even striking at them but no actual catch. I was driving into El Dorado Park about a year ago and one flew right in front of me carrying a gopher. I parked and ran but only got it swallowing the gopher or just after anyway. You can see the bulge. I just happened to find that video so maybe I’ll include it on a future one though it was a couple seconds too late. I always watch for the night herons to see if they might hunt gophers. I saw a couple a month or so ago that really looked possible but gophers are pretty hard to find now.

[@robbernath]

@@jimzenor9148 I believe you mentioned in other videos that the parks you normally visit were using poison to control the gopher populations there. It's possible that may have simply wiped out all of them with no replenishment. I don't know how smart gophers are (or aren't) but the survivors may have willingly migrated to other locations that are safer for them.

[@jimzenor9148]

@@robbernath in El Dorado Park, there are a few gophers but they seemed to have significantly reduced the population with the poison. I think the few gophers left are quite wary. The other park that was good for gophers is too overgrown with weeds due to the heavy rains earlier in the year. I keep watching for them to cut the weeds.