Heron fishing in a garden pond

We discovered that the fish in our garden pond were disappearing. We had, on occasion, seen a heron lurking near the pond but thought that a simple string barrier would stop it.

hreon approachin pond

But we were wrong… This photo shows the heron approaching the pond from the left – it is looking for the place where it squeezes under the string.

This was taken early (from 5:47) by my cheap wildlife camera. Although the sky was lightening, it was still dark enough for the camera to be in infra-red night-time mode.

This next photo, from later in the sequence, shows the heron in the pond looking for fish to eat:

Heron in the pond looking for a meal

In all, the sequence lasted about 14 minutes with photos being taken at the rate of about 1 every 6 seconds.  I have assembled the 147 images into a short time-lapse video:

heron fishing in garden pond from Paul L.G. Morris on Vimeo.