Sunday, January 5, 2020

Natural Order

I spend a lot of time visiting parks and wildlife reserves in search of the beautiful living things that are found there, and I have hundreds of photos to show that they really are magnificent. We are also very fortunate to have a beautiful neighborhood with a small, man made lake where the ducks and various seabirds visit, hang out and come and go at will. I love them and take photos sometimes. I normally prefer not to disturb the general scene with my presence. The wild birds don’t react much to human presence here near the ocean due to living among the hustle and bustle of city life themselves. The ducks, however, think that anything moving is a potential carrier of food, and come waddling over and disrupting any serenity that exists. It is normally quite mundane and quiet as we sit on the porch sipping coffee on a Saturday morning. 

Yesterday, however, found Nature abuzz with excitement and drama and my hubby-the Spotter-had his eye on the details while I grabbed my camera to try and capture the moments. 

Despite my best effort and good intentions, the dim light and excessive movement of the water did not aid me in getting the best shots. But I think you will be able to get the gist of how the morning events unfolded. 

When any Cormorant or Anhinga begins circling in the water with intent, you can bet they are going fishing. I’ve managed to capture images of both birds fishing and get photos of them with their little silvery prizes; so when hubby alerted me that the Cormorant in question had caught something, I grabbed the camera and started to shoot. But I was soon to realize that this was no ordinary catch. At first I thought it was a snake. Wouldn’t you? 




But as I watched the usual process of my feathered friend trying to position its prey for proper swallowing, I noticed it didn’t look like any ordinary snake. It looked like it had fins! I told my hubby and he began looking this up on the internet while I kept snapping. First we decided it was a snakehead fish. Then we found out there were multiple kinds of fish that looked like snakes. It would only be after I looked more closely at the digital images that we would discover exactly what our friend had removed from the little lake. It was an invasive Asian Eel. 




It would appear our wise fishing friend had succeeded in fulfilling his obligation to the natural order. He was quite proud of himself as well, strutting around the lake for a couple of hours after he had swallowed the treat, bathing in the fountain and drying his wings.



He even tried to break up an attempted Muskovey murder. But....that’s a story for another day. Ducks with ill intentions. 

Have a great week everyone! Keep a sharp eye out for invasive eels in your bathtubs, toilets and dishwashers. 🤣😳

This post sponsored by Linda Hill’s JusJoJan prompt/.








4 comments:

  1. In my ... in my toilet? An EEL????? Okay, lights on, even at night. Thanks for that, Cheryl. Limes in the beer, cherries in the bourbon, and eels in the toilet. You just can't leave well enough alone, can ya? ;) :D

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  2. I could have lived fine without that last bit of warning, Cheryl. I doubt many of those eels make it this far north. Maybe I'll put a shotgun in the bathroom, just in case.

    Great action photos

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  3. Oh no Dan.You’ll shoot your eye put for sure! 🤣But seriously, snakes love to migrate to lavatory areas. After a mini flooding of our clinic in Baton Rouge during one hurricane season I was opening one of the exam rooms and was confronted by a baby cotton mouth! 😱 PS Lee says those eels have been reported as far north as Georgia. The Japanese and Korean species have been seen in New York! 🙊

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