Birds chasing our Goldfish
Here’s a great blue heron sitting on a bush that looks too frail to support it. It is lurking at the edge of the marsh hoping to have another go at our goldfish. We seem to spend our time recently shooing large birds out of the pond. First the egrets, now this. I hope the pond still has the goldfish shelters that I built into it in the first place: hideyholes under large stones propped up on bricks. I know stones and debris have fallen into the pond. I just hope they haven’t blocked the hiding places, but it is much too cold and wet at the moment for me to get into the pond to find out.
We also struggled with goldfish (Koi) in the large resaca (i.e. bayou, stream, etc) bordering our yard. The egrets and herons won and we now just enjoy watching them fish.
Comment by Mary Beth — February 2, 2008 @ 9:29 am
I think you’re wise. We knew the herons would get some of the goldfish, which is why we started with tiny 15-cent fish. But they reproduce rapidly and some of them always seem to escape the birds’ depredations. The birds get the big fish, which rescues us from emulating the horrid scene at Huntington Gardens, where the goldfish are so large and aggressive they’re scary!
Comment by karen — February 3, 2008 @ 8:08 am
What a beautiful heron! Ah, we love the watch the wildlife, but sometimes it’s painful to see the cycle of life come full circle. I feel for you…and I wouldn’t be out in the pond now, either! I’m always trying to protect all of our birds (I say “our”) from the 2 neighbor cats who like to come lurk under our feeders.
Comment by Diana — February 3, 2008 @ 10:18 pm
Cats are the worst. Naturalists on the Galapagos say feral cats are THE most destructive introduced organism (plant or animal). We once had to get rid of a cat that could take a bird from our feeder at a standing leap. It’s not fair to attract wildlife and also own a killer cat. We, too, wage constant war against the neighbors’ cats.
Comment by karen — February 4, 2008 @ 8:41 am
I like the way you’ve come to terms with herons harvesting your goldfish, Karen… it seems more sensible than trying to protect thousand-dollar koi. But I might not like to actually see the speared fish!
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Comment by Annie in Austin — February 7, 2008 @ 10:58 pm
Well, I’m with you on that, but all you actually see is the bird tossing its head back and swallowing! The weather warmed up yesterday, and we discovered that there are still at least 20 goldfish in the pond. I think Thom’s right that the birds tend to get the larger ones, because the school swimming around yesterday was composed on smaller ones.
As a biologist, what I find interesting is that they are not all gold. Some with black and white blooges have survived. In our last pond, we discovered, as I would have expected, that the ones with fancy tails disappeared first. You’d expect this on evolutionary grounds: fish bred for their pretty looks are not as good at escaping predators as the wild type (if there is such a thing as a wild type domestic goldfish).
Comment by karen — February 8, 2008 @ 8:40 am
We only have some cheap 10-cent goldfish but it’s amazing how attached we’ve become to them. (We haven’t named them, but I can tell them all apart.) Our biggest problem so far is raccoons. Our contractor didn’t finish digging out the pond before the cement truck was scheduled and thus it is too shallow to keep raccoons out. For now, we’ve covered the pond in bird-netting to keep out the raccoons and the cats. We haven’t come up with a permanent solution yet but can’t do anything until construction is completed. At this point, that may be a very long time.
I suppose I worry too much over 70 cents worth of fish.
Comment by mss @ Zanthan Gardens — February 16, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
You have my sympathy for a pond that is too shallow. Ours is too. I dug it myself with a rented thingummy, but ran into awful tree roots and gave up when I shouldn’t have. As a result, herons can wade in the pond and I have to keep clearing out the deeper part, so that the goldfish have somewhere to hide.
Comment by karen — February 18, 2008 @ 10:37 am