FEBRUARY MISTY MORNING, HUEY, ANNA

 COOL MORNINGS BRING SMOKE ON THE WATER

When the pond is naturally at 70 degrees F (from day time heating by the sun) but the night air cools down into the low 40's we get this smoke-like magical water vapor forming plumes reaching into the sky. 

On Duck Island, that's Anna our resident Anhinga, also enjoying the beautiful water vapor display. By 8AM she is full of fish and drying her wings for some "Fly-About" (like "walk about" but bird like).

Huey with Devil Horns

Huey, our Great Blue Heron, doesn't like raccoons near him when he's fishing at night.  This was a lucky catch, to grab this video of him yelling at and attacking a mama raccoon while it was still daylight.  We hear the "yell" of the wild Huey every evening as he polices the pond.  Scary! :)

HUEY EATS A PANFISH

The pictures say it all.

MEMORIAL DAY RACON ENCOUNTER

On Friday night of Memorial day weekend Mary finally got her chance to pet a raccoon who we quickly named "Kitty". 

Kitty was very small, about the size of a softball. He was sitting on our window sill outside. It looked like his mom had accidentally left him there. He was acting sick but after we gave him a bowl of water he quickly sprung back to life and wolfed down a few black oil sunflower seeds. After playing with him for four hours we closed the window and in the morning he was gone.

We've since seen a mama with three babies and we think Kitty is one of them. He appears to be doing fine, one of the late batches of racon babies this year.

Lessons learned:  

1. Raccoons are NOT soft, not even the babies

2. When you add water to a dry raccoon, they get bitey

BABY HUEY THE HERON

This big guy mainly fishes in the pond at night. He stands over 48" tall when his neck is fully extended. At night he intimidates the raccoons, he is so big that they are afraid of him even though he has no way to inflict pain on them.

We call him Baby Huey to keep him separate from the other herons that come to visit, Huey is a very unique bird and he prefers to fish alone (note to other herons, stay away when Huey is here, Hero, be cool!).

Heron

Here he is working his way towards where all the fish hang around looking for nom. It is bound to be a very ugly morning for some slow moving panfish.

THE SILENT GIANT

He stands motionless waiting for an innocent panfish to make one wrong move, then POW, no more panfeesh. It's Baby Huey one of our favorite herons.

When standing upright he is almost five feet tall.