Simple pleasures

Wally

Bloggers have taught me a lot about India.  But recently, this young Indian woman wrote about using the quieter time now forced on us to find “immense satisfaction and happiness in small little things of life.” https://neelstoria.wordpress.com/2020/04/30/lockdown-moments-evening-morning-squirrel-bird/

I had not thought about it that way, but we too have enjoyed some new, more relaxed activities.  Among other things, we walk down to the bridge by our condo to feed the fish.  It has been a simple pleasure that rewards us most evenings with something new.

Sitting on our lanai, we had seen people regularly stopping by.  One elderly lady comes with bread for the fish each morning.  They like it better than the commercial pond fish food I had in the garage.

We are careful not to feed Wally, the neighborhood alligator, but he is not there most evenings.  On the other hand, some birds do seem to come shortly before sunset.

An anhinga swam under the clear water gathering up small fish before getting out to dry his wings.

One evening we saw a yellow-crested night heron for our first and only time.  His relatives, the black-crested, are common in the area.

On another night, a young hawk settled on the bridge about ten feet from us.  Recently I saw the rain-sleeked bird on top of a lamp post looking like a finial, but this is the closest I have ever seen any hawk.

A group of three turtles learned to look for people on the bridge.  They come swimming up right away.  They are too slow to compete with the fish, but we find if we lure them into shallower water, they grab a bite now and then.

Three turtles and a heron

But the most interesting to us is a green-backed heron, a small bird.  Unlike the moorhen or the ibis, he is not interested in bread.  He waits for us to toss a piece close to the shore and then grabs the fish that come to get it.  He is very patient and very fast.  Normally his head sticks close to his shoulders.  When he spears a fish, it flashes out on a long neck so quickly it is almost too fast to see.  If the fish is a little larger than average, he has to extend his neck in order to swallow it, sometimes almost doubling the length of his body.

Marsh hawk?

Shadows on the pond

Pond fish

An anhinga lacks oil in its feathers and must dry out occasionally or sink to the bottom.

Green-backed heron.

Green-backed heron.

Swallowing a fish

Click on photos to enlarge.

These photos were taken on my phone; I regret I missed both the night heron and several tarpon which came swimming to within about ten feet one day.  It would have been wonderful to have had a camera to capture these unusual visitors.