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Spear Fishing

This image works for Sliders Sunday because it’s a composite. I replaced the fish that was in the original image.

 

This Great Blue Heron did catch the catfish that you see here. But it kept tossing the fish back down into the muck and mud of the lagoon, and then spearing it again, over and over, despite the fact that the fish appeared to be dead. I watched the heron do this repeatedly for probably 30 to 40 minutes, and I snapped a large number of images while I was watching. On a couple of occasions, the heron appeared to be trying to swallow the fish, but couldn’t get it down.

 

Anyway, I liked this pose of the heron the best of all of the shots that I took. But by the time I captured this image, the dead fish was completely covered in mud, which detracted from the image, IMO. So I used Photoshop to replace the mud-caked fish with one from an earlier shot that I took when the fish was still relatively clean.

 

When I left, the heron was still continuing to drop the fish into the mud and re-spear it, so I don’t know how this scenario ended.

 

For any who are interested, I’m including a close-up of the mud-covered fish from the original image in the first comment.

 

HSS!

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Uploaded on July 31, 2016
Taken on June 13, 2016