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| Catch of the Day at Blue Heron Lake |
Despite yesterday's Google AI query that resulted in park staff denying there are fish in the lakes of Golden Gate Park, today's query ("Are there fish in Blue Heron Lake?") returned a list of the following names of fish in the lake: sunfish, bluegill, pumpkinseed, perch, bass, koi, pike, minnows, shad, carp, catfish, and muskellunge.
If I had to guess what the great blue heron above caught, I'd say sunfish, but let me know if you know different. Click any photo to view it larger.
I'd been watching the heron for a while and was just about to pack up the camera and ride home when I saw it make a stab at something. I zoomed in to discover that it had caught a pretty good-sized fish. It took just under two-and-a-half minutes to go from catching it to swallowing it (according to timestamps on the photos).
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View from the Aeonium Highlands
A highlight of the day's walk was a sound rather than an image. I heard my first-ever hermit thrush singing here in the city. It was in someone's back yard, and traffic noise on Pacheco Street almost drowned it out. Another highlight was finding the band-tailed pigeon nest (first seen on 2/11/25) empty, presumably after a successful fledging of chicks that I never got to see. |
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| Heron on the Hunt |
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| Passing Geese |
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| The Long View |
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| The fish struggled right up to the end. |
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| The serrated beaks of great blue herons help them keep a strong grip on even a flailing fish. |
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| After getting the fish aligned with its bill, the heron is finally ready to drop it down the hatch. |
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| A fish becomes a heron. |
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| Happy Heron |
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| Mt. Shasta This Morning |
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