On one of our daily recuperation strolls with dad a few days ago, we had driven to Hogganfield Loch in Glasgow, a good-sized body of water which used to be home to rowboats (sadly they seem to have gone, at least for now), and large amounts of birds make it their home. As we walked around (slowly, my pace is so reduced I don’t have to remind myself to slow down to match my dad!), I snapped a few photos (of course), spotting this Goldeneye duck in the loch (as everyone knows, the Goldeneye is the most James Bond of all ducks!!).
According to a wildlife site, the Goldeneyes spend much of the winter in the Highlands and come down to central Scotland in the spring, attracted to large bodies of water like this, so we were lucky in our timing (I could only see this pair, perhaps there were a few others further out).
A fellow photographer we had been chatting to pointed us to a large body of reeds in a corner, just beyond the main path, where a heron was standing, stock-still. Then every now and then it would move, very slightly and slowly, and I realised it was stalking something in the muddy ground between the reeds.
I managed a few photos, then saw its head duck down swiftly – it had found its prey. I couldn’t get a clear photo because the head was below the reeds now, so it was obscured. I could just make out the heron scooping up some hapless creature (likely a frog) in that long, sharp beak, tilting its head back to swallow it. By the time it raised its head above the reeds again so I could take some close-ups, it had already consumed whatever it had been hunting.
Still, it was remarkable to get close enough to use the zoom to get a few close-ups of this creature – you can see the dinosaur heritage in these things, especially when hunting remorselessly.
