Venus Pool - Great White Egrets and Carp!

I wasn't planning on taking more images of the GW Egrets but I was tempted by one catching a small Carp...

Then, the sight of them joining together as a group caught my eye...

Here's why from a distance...

Cropping a bit closer...

In the end, they gave up as the Carp was simply too large! Here's a smaller one tucked away in the bill!

Venus Pool - hungry Cormorant

 It never fails to amaze me how 'fish eating' birds can pull off the impossible and swallow outrageous specimens! Like this Common Carp being casually tossed to it's doom by a Cormorant on Christmas eve at Venus Pool!

It's all a matter of stifling any 'fight' and then aligning the catch....

A stretchy gape and oesophagus plus willpower are all that's needed!

I counted 67 Cormorant today... Merry Christmas!!

Venus Pool - Heron vs Carp!

I've seen Herons catch and eat all sorts of prey (Water Rail, Moorhen, Mole, large Eel and various fish) but today was as outrageous a catch as I've seen! I thought I'd post the whole sequence, it was quite gruesome to behold but the fish was very quickly moribund so didn't know much about it!!

Caution - the sequence contains serious 'threat' and violence...

This was the moment I became aware a (very one sideed) battle was brewing, one of the local Herons had speared a Common Carp and brought it ashore. After two more serious strikes to the head, I think the fish was a goner anyway!

Then clearly favouring a nicely cleaned fish, all the mud was washed off

With a rinse here and there...

The next stage was lining up the fish for it's terminal journey!

There's no going back now...

And it rapidly slipped out of view...

Gulp!

The whole process took exactly 1 minute which shows what efficient killing machines Herons are! And a couple of minutes later, it was back out stalking more unsuspecting quarry...