First of all, I learned that it’s “heron” and not “huron“.  Oops.  I was wondering why my Google searches kept directing me to Michigan-related websites…

Last night Dave and I went on a good old fashioned DATE!  The kids are visiting grandparents in the northeast through next weekend, and even though Dave’s hard at work these two weeks, we had a fantastic weekend!  Yesterday we went tubing on a creek in the northern part of the Florida Panhandle, then we went parasailing and wrapped up the evening with a delightful steamed seafood dinner.  I’ll be blogging about our parasailing next, but for now I wanted to share this cool series of iPhone pictures I took of this Great Blue Heron* enjoying some fish.  I didn’t have my good camera with me, since I didn’t want to lose it on the parasailing boat.

I thanked the family who bought the fish feed that lured the fish for the bird to eat…

*Yes, I’m capitalizing the full name of this species of bird, per this journal article.

He started out on the dock, staring intently at a patch of water near the public fish food machine.

Staring hard…

Now he’s on a floating platform just below the fish feed machine…he moved to this spot after a kid put 50 cents in the  machine and got a handful of fish food.

Splash!  He quickly darts his beak into the water as the fish come up to get the feed.

He got one!

After swallowing the first fish, he’s immediately on the lookout again…

Splash!

Another one!

You can see how the fish has enlarged his neck.