on two occasions last year, i was doing some photographic work at juanita
bay park when a great blue heron found themself super-sized happy meals. in
the first instance, i believe his catch was a very large catfish, and it was
amazing to watch him at work. i think he was able to eat much of this catch
due to having speared his prey. the spearing helped to (eventually) divide
the fish into at least two more manageable pieces.

on the second occasion, our hero may have speared the fish at first (a large
unidentified species of salmon), but chose for whatever reason not to chop
it in half. not that it would have helped much, as the fish outweighed the
heron by at least twice, and probably much more. the battle raged epic, the
heron repositioning the salmon every few minutes for the dinner slide of
doom, the salmon not really needing to do anything except continue breathing
to thwart this (much too wide, too heavy)...

finally, about 20-30 minutes later, the heron gave up and wandered off for
smaller munchies. unfortunately, about the same time, the salmon died a
pyrrhic victory as well.

a photo of this encounter appears in the BIRDS gallery, under Long-legged
Waders / Great Blue Herons (GBHE), second page (about 7-8 photos in). it's
painfully obvious to the human observer this bird will not take this fish in
this manner.

it took the bird a little longer to come to the same conclusion.
00 caren
http://www.parkgallery.org

-----Original Message-----
From: tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu
[mailto:tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu]On Behalf Of J & B
Adamowski LaComa
Sent: Saturday, 2005 October 15 07:14
To: tweeters
Subject: [Tweeters] how strong are they???


On a recent trip to the upper Clearwater drainage I caught a glimpse of
something struggling in the river through the tree's. I stopped the car and
noticed an Osprey looking as though he was drowning. I watched with
amazement as he floated downstream about 200' then lifted from the water and
returned to the head of the run (riffle). Here he plunged in and rode down
200' or so again...what the heck? So, curiosity caught me and I walked over
to the edge of the river to try and see what was going on That's when I saw
the spawning Chinook salmon. This Osprey was literally clamping on and
trying to lift 30-40 pound Chinook (or King)! Obviously this was not going
to happen as the fish were easily 3-4 times the weight of the bird. He/she
thought it was going to happen though and I began to chuckle.....after about
10 minutes of this I had seen enough and began a walk to the car when I
turned back for another glance and saw the Osprey take flight...........with
a Chinook! I let something that I can't repeat come out of my mouth and the
Osprey looked right at me as he flew away with a smaller (still 20+ pound
salmon) and I swear he chirped as if to say "how do you like me now?".
Unbelievable!

Bryan
Shoreline, Wa
jennandbryan at msn.com



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