Heron Diet Surprise

I saw an amazing thing today. Sitting on the grass at El Dorado park, reading a book, I was amid a group of seven large herons within a fifty yard radius of me. Five whites, two blues. They’re doing their regular thing: standing immobile, occasionally walking in their stately slow-motion fashion. I ponder what they eat while they’re out here at the park. Insects, I guess. Usually I see them perched on rocks in the San Gabriel River adjacent to the bike trail. I’m reading a Joe Kurtz novel by Dan Simmons. Toughest hard-boiled P.I. there is, bar none. I glance up, and there’s a great blue heron about thirty feet from me. I watch him. He’s beautiful. Magnificent. He crouches down, and I assume he’s making himself smaller because I’m so close.

Suddenly, he whips his head forward, jabs his head in the grass, and comes up with a field mouse in his beak. A little mouse about four inches long. In a few seconds he has gulped it down, and I could see the big bulge in his neck. I was dumbfounded. “Holy shit,” I whispered, a big smile on my face. So that’s what they eat. I was sorry my father-in-law Philip wasn’t there to witness this little slice of the natural world. He’s the birder, not me. And I wished I had my camera, to capture the image of the bloated throat.

Photo by Stephen Pinker

The Host

Yes, see 300, but also see The Host, a South Korean film (subtitles), which is a great monster movie. Not as scary as I thought it would be, but it was tense, and had chumbuckets full of humor. I laughed out loud several times. Really. And it was interesting to note how South Korean culture came into play (cell phones, protesters, cops, agitprop, homeless), as well as a portrait of our good ol' USA, which I think came across as the real monster, at least in this filmaker's vision. You tell me.

Arcade Fire In Concert

NPR has given us the gift of offering a live concert by the Montreal band Arcade Fire at this site. Me and Kim and Barb and ML saw them back in the summer of 2005 at the Hollywood Bowl, where they opened for David Byrne. A fantastic concert. Check out their latest musical astonishments on the NPR site, or I may be forced to post another picture of my cat.