The Lake

The ol’ Chief is being adventurous.  I am at the lake and will be blogging on Mrs. Chief’s laptop.

What Lake, you ask?

Grand Lake with the city of Celina, Ohio on the northwest corner of the lake.  In recent years it has been re-named Grand Lake St. Marys which includes the city on the east end of the lake.  But when I first came here in 1959, it was simply – Grand Lake.

After her husband died a year and a half ago, mother-in-law sold the farm, literally, and used some of the proceeds to buy a cottage on a channel just off the main part of the lake.  I enjoy it here.  As long as I have internet access and cable TV, I can enjoy anywhere.

Mrs. Chief loves it here.  The quiet and solitude – peaceful.  Actually, we both miss our place on Lake of Egypt, just south of Marion, IL which we left in 2006 so Mrs. Chief could be closer to her mother.

So, I have been observing a great blue heron (and here) catching her or his lunch.  We had a lot of  great blue herons at Lake of  Egypt, but I never observed them like I have been for the past couple of hours.  The water in the channel is about 18″ below the top of the concrete liner that defines the channel.  The heron will stand on the ground below the concrete and look for fish. And look.  Finally, when a likely candidate for lunch gets close enough, the heron will straighten his neck and almost lose his balance before pulling his beak out of the water with a 3 – 5″ fish firmly clamped in his beak.  He will adjust the fish so it goes head first (least resistance) and a big fish may take several tries.  You can actually see the fish slide down the long throat of the heron.

So far s/he has caught 3 fish over about an hour period.  S/he keeps moving farther away from me and I am about 80 yards from the bird.  I was curious if herons have binocular vision.  Most predators, except ambush predators (crocodiles), like humans, cats, dogs, et cetera have binocular vision.

This picture from the San Pedro News Pilot shows that herons have binocular vision when looking down or below their beak.  Evolution is interesting.