The heron that owns the culvert
There is a concrete culvert where the creek meets the channel, and for three autumns now the same great blue heron has stood on its lip like a doorman. I can't prove it is the same bird. But it has the same habit of turning its back on the path, and the same ragged plume on the left side of its neck, and I have stopped pretending I don't recognise it.
This morning it was there at 7:40, which is about when the water drops enough to expose the little shelf of mud under the outflow. Small fish get pushed through the pipe and arrive confused. The heron does not chase them. It waits, leans, and strikes maybe once every four minutes. I timed six strikes; four connected.
The egrets work differently
Three snowy egrets were working the shallows thirty metres downstream, and the contrast is almost comic. They stir the water with one yellow foot, sprint three steps, stab, miss, sprint again. All that effort for what looked like a similar catch rate. Different temperaments, same mud.
A black phoebe hawked insects off the railing the whole time, flicking its tail after every landing. The kingfisher I only heard: that dry rattle moving upstream, never close enough to see.
What I changed
I have been trying to photograph the heron's strike for weeks and always end up with a grey blur. Today I put the camera away after ten minutes and just watched. The notebook page is better than any frame I've managed. The pencil sketch of the lean, the neck folded back like a hinge, says more than the blur did.
Next time: come at the low-low tide later this month and see whether it moves to the outer bar.