a dangerous meal

Well, this could have been a dangerous meal for the great blue heron. Turns out it wasn't, phew. I had to do an errand near where we used to live and decided while out that way, to take a walk with the pups at my favorite DeSoto memorial. It was quite windy for Florida standards, so I put on a jacket and off we went.

I took 125 photos there! I deleted a bunch, but you can imagine my dilemma at choosing a blip. I settled on this one of the great blue heron with a puffer fish ~ not a balloon! I shot this from a distance so not to scare him. My Sony Cybershot lens has a 30x optical zoom and goes to 810 mm -so wonderful for me. I'm able to get shots like this, that I was not able to before. View this large!

It's funny, I could tell the heron had a fish, but at that distance I did not know what kind of fish. When I looked at the photos on my computer and called in my husband for a consultation he deduced it was a puffer fish. What a wild fish! They have large external spines that are only visible when the fish is puffed up, like in this blip. Ouch! They are also believed to be the second most poisonous vertebrate in the world, yikes. I watched the heron continue to "wash" the fish in the water and one of those times the fish got away. Good thing! Another version of the same bird and fish not puffed up is here.

I remembered another funny heron/fish photo I blipped where the birds eyes were bigger than his mouth - here! In fact, I have taken quite a few bird related photos since I moved to Florida and you'll find them all tagged here, if you like.

My sister and family are coming on Monday, they will stay with my mom. We'll have a nice Christnmas Eve dinner together and they will stay for a week! I will be dancing my gratitude on Tuesday morning, christmas day on the beach with gratitude dancing and we will go have a small christmas festivity at my mom's later in the afternoon.

wish all things wonderful for you and yours!