Gone Fishin'

This past July during a quick little cottage visit up North, a feathered friend decided to visit and show off his fishing skills.  Oddly enough, this happened just a little bit after My Lovely Assistant, a skilled fisher in her own right, had just shoved off in a peddle boat to see if she could catch anything on the lake.  There's a bit of a running joke about fish in that lake, mostly because she never seems to find any.  The lake is called Lac Désert, roughly translated to English it becomes Empty Lake.  I always thought it was a rather apt name, but the Heron proved me wrong in about five minutes.  He swooped in and landed on a rock, just across from the dock I was sitting on.  I was trying to take pictures of a dragonfly that was buzzing around so I already had my camera handy.  The bird watched me for a little bit while I took a few photographs while he was perched on a rock.  I tried not to make any quick movements, which isn't really that difficult of a task for me.  After a few moments, he began to slowly walk along the shore, going over and under some branches and past a beaver dam.  Then suddenly, BANG!  He spiked his head into the water and when he came back up I saw that he had speared a fish with his beak.  It was the first time in three years that I had actually seen a fish come out of that lake.  Ever the showman, the Heron took his time to show off his trophy, making sure that I would get a good shot.  He then seemed to play with it in his mouth a little bit before gulping it down, and flying away.  I feel like I got some pretty nice shots of the whole thing, so here they are for you all to see.  The first photograph was taken at f/5.6, 1/640sec, ISO 400 at 300mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/5.6, 1/500sec, ISO 400 at 300mm.  Here are the rest of the photographs from the fishing session.

f/5.6, 1/640sec, ISO 400 at 300mm

f/6.3, 1/500sec, ISO 400 at 300mm

f/6.3, 1/640sec, ISO 400 at 300mm

f/6.3, 1/400sec, ISO 400 at 300mm

I was a little bit disappointed with the final photo.  The head is a little bit blurry.  I probably should have shot with a smaller aperture, but ht bird took off kind of abruptly and I didn't have time to switch.  It was a pretty cool experience, and I got to see a fish come of the Empty Lake.