Had a visitor in the field behind the house all afternoon.

Adirondack case guy

Well-known Member
Well, this field doesn't have a pond in it, but we had rain since yesterday afternoon. Total of 1.87" when it cleared this afternoon. This guy was hunting and filling his belly.
Loren, the Acg.
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That is what we called them here in Wisconsin. Captured one when we were kids. Nothing to play with. That beak could get you real fast. Might take out an eye or two.
 
That one is a great blue, and if your place is like mine there are frogs everywhere this year. I was walking thru the soy a few days back and the leopard frogs were all over the place. Green frogs also. Your bird was probably hunting these in the grass. Haven't seen any herons on the fields doing it but the sandhill cranes are there pretty much every day.
 
That name is derived from the characteristic these birds have of squirting out about a quart of excrement when they take off - probably a way to discourage what ever they may be escaping from. Shy is a slurred from of "sh#t" and poke is an old term for bag or sack. Shy poke literally means bag of sh#t! Not a nice name for such an elegant looking bird.
 
There's a couple herons down in the creek a lot, a few years ago I saw a similar bird only bigger running down the hill on the other side of the creek then through a gate and across the highway, don't know what it was, maybe a sand hill crane, don't know how big they are.
 
Around here they eat fish. What's frustrating is buying several hundred 6-8" channel cat fingerlings in the spring expecting to get some table ware later on in the fall and nothing. I feed mine floating catfish food and you can determine the size and quantity by watching them feed. I did have some bass that love them but I am down to one now. Had 2 for awhile but the smaller one died for some reason.

Course we also have the snapping turtles. Year before last I counted 15 sun bathing. Big enough to get 3 fingers in their mouth.....ugly.

Then there is the drought. No catfish. A small pool of perch dwindling daily. The one bass I mentioned. I lost 100 (stopped counting) of my big cats and bass 3 years ago with drought and coontail moss choking off the oxygen.

So I don't worry about the Herons any more.

Mark
 
We have a heron or two that stops by our pond every spring and fall. They tank up on frogs and the few stunted bullheads we have in the pond.
 
I grew up in Iowa. Des Moines is French for "of the monks", probably referring to missionaries in that area. Des Moines is barely similar to "moinsuera", the name Indians living East of Des Moines gave to ones in that area. It refers to "excrement on the face"! It was common for rival nations to give derogatory names to their neighbors. Sometimes the bad name was the one that stuck. The term Iowa, meaning "sleepy ones" was given by the Indians living to the West of what became Iowa.
 
There are days I wished it had gone all the way. They make a dreadful noise and it can be loud up close but the part I dislike the most is when they get used to you being around and you raise your head and realize there is 2-3 of them standing a short distance away just watching you. Some of the neighbors have taken to feeding them (of course) which doesn't help. One idgit has a koi pond in her back yard. I am just waiting for the day I hear her shriek because one of her koi took a long ride inside one of these things.
 

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