Today, in case you weren’t aware, was Tax Day, and I, true to my usual form, was wrestling with my tax forms. I managed to finish earlier than I usually do, and got in an hour of riding my bicycle through the park. It’s hard, though, to take photos while moving, and also not the best way to see what’s going on in the world around you. So after picking R up from school, I headed back to America’s premier urban park to catch some photons.
In between walking around the park today, talking with the people I met, and catching some photos, I managed to stumble upon a great egret playing with his food. Standing in the water between Picnic Island and the Grand Basin, this hapless (maybe even helpless) predator was struggling with one rather tenacious fish when I first spied him, and I watched from two different vantage points for over 4 minutes as he kept trying to line his dinner up to easily slide down his gullet. Time after time, however, his dinner seemed to slip from his craw and return to the water, requiring him to snatch at it again. When I left, he was still working on the problem and looking no closer to a resolution. I would have stayed longer, but I had already caught over 200 photos of him alone and I had a sunset to catch.
A great egret struggles to get his dinner to cooperate. Click on image for more of today’s photos.