The wildlife is restless this morning. The mullet are, no doubt, having some kinds of athletic games going on – I never heard so much splashing. They make me laugh, the silliest and most fun fish of all. And Steve, so patient, stood for a really long time trying to get a picture for me. What he ended up with is the fish from a weird perspective – you can barely see him above the water. But the picture definitely tells the story: the rings left in the water are his footprints, like a big stone being skipped across.
In the middle of all the shrieking, calling and splashing, we heard a strange “thwack, thwack.” What on earth? There is an old dead tree at the edge of the lake just down from our balcony. A big black cormorant sits there for hours every morning and afternoon. His special spot.
This morning a great blue heron decided it looked appealing. After much posturing and attempted size-intimidation by the heron,
the two decided to have a go at it, beak to beak. Very noisy and exciting. We watched for a good little while, snapping pictures and praying that the camera battery would hold. Finally they managed an uneasy truce with neither of them in total relaxation mode.
Suddenly from just above our heads another heron swept down upon the tree and the two of them flew off across the lagoon. It was majestic and breath-taking. And I was struck that if we had just stopped and looked around a bit, we would have snapped an incredible picture of the heron just above us in the tree.
Meanwhile, the cormorant smoothed out his ruffled feathers, looked around to see if anyone was watching and settled in for his nap.
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