This morning after heading to the St. Paul Farmer’s Market, I stopped by Coastal Seafood to pick up three pounds of live crayfish. No, it’s not for a crayfish boil tonight, but for the herons.

From there I headed up to WRC where I met Deb W. who was kind enough to bring to us more than two dozen sunnies that she caught this morning. Again, all for the herons. (are you getting an idea of how much they eat? It’s amazing, really.)

I then headed south to the herons’ outdoor caging facility where I watched entranced as they preened, interacted, fished and yelled at me.

The herons have matured to the point that they choose sunfish (probably their most plentiful fish in the wild) over the other fish in their pools, and eschew the dead fish, preferring live ones.

Hope you enjoy the videos!

Heron fishing for minnows.

Heron gulping a sunfish (amazing how they instinctively know to rotate the fish, and keep it moist to help it slide down).

Herons interacting with each other (great look at how they flex their crowns)

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 9th, 2011 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Nursery News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.