A bird’s gotta eat

I’m delighted to be able to get back out onto the trails again, and I’ve been building back my stamina. This morning, I did a nearly 1.5 mile loop out at the Pole Farm, and at my slower pace, I’m learning to enjoy how it brings me unexpected pleasures in birding.

The photo atop this post is a prime example. I drove over to Colonial Lake Park just a couple of miles away here in Lawrence Township, knowing that I could park close the lake and not have to overtax myself in walking. The park also has benches that I can park on whenever I need a break.

I had scanned most of the lake for what few birds were on the water. As I looked toward the end of the lake that’s close to U.S. 1 Business, I spotted a great egret plying the shallows near the lake’s edge. I wandered down toward it, being careful not to spook it by making any sudden movements.

I stood back from the bird about 50 feet away, propped my cane against my leg and brought up my camera. Paying me no obvious heed, the bird kept strutting in the shallow water, taking aim at whatever was stirring below. I took several shots of the bird stalking, and then — bang! — it struck. I blasted away, not knowing what the egret had plucked from the muck.

In my fully mobile days, I probably would have taken a few shots and walked on. But since I’m sporting a cane these days, I decided to stay a while to increase my odds of a good shot.

That’s what happened. Once I got home, I pulled up the image to discover that the egret had snagged a tadpole, one that will never grow up to be a frog.

Another day I headed over to Veterans Park in Hamilton, where the lake attracts lots of geese and ducks. My friend Laura and I had gone there to see if we might catch site of a rare-to- Mercer-County dunlin that other birders had been seeing the previous few days. We did get to put the dunlin on our life lists, and we also managed to catch a double-crested cormorant in the act of catching and eating a fish.

The fish put up a fight, or maybe the cormorant just liked thrashing it about. In any event, the struggle lasted long enough for me to get a couple of illustrative frames.

Those back-to-back episodes of birds getting their protein quotient reminded me that critters prey on other critters, a basic tenet of nature.

For contrast, while walking at the Pole Farm this morning, I was able to shoot a few frames of a yellow-rumped warbler snacking on berries. There was a lot less drama in that scene, and I enjoyed it.