Wild Kingdom Moment

One day I was eating lunch with some friends at the Flatwater Grill on Melton Hill Lake in Oak Ridge.  It was a really nice late spring day so we decided to sit out on the patio.  It was in the low 80s.  The sun was out.  It was a little humid, but not too bad.  The Flatwater’s patio overlooks the lake, and from where we were sitting we could see a school of fish feeding on a school of minnows near the surface of the lake.  It looked like a bunch of little sharks chasing seals in those Discovery Channel videos.  You could see the little waves that the fish were making as they hunted down the minnows and you could see minnows jumping out in front of them as they tried to get away.  It was pretty interesting to watch the fish twist and turn and change directions as a group as they chased the minnows.  You could see their little dorsal fins cutting through the water almost in unison.  All we needed was the super slow motion video.

It really became interesting when all the activity near the surface caught the attention of a nearby Blue Herron that promptly took off from where it was down the lake.  Once the Herron took off, the hunters became the hunted.  The Blue Herron gained altitude and then dove straight down on that school of fish.   Just before it hit the water the school of fish scattered in a hundred different directions.  It was almost like they saw the Herron before it hit the water.  That didn’t stop the Herron though.  It hit the water and when it came up it brought out an eight inch Skipjack Herring.  The fish was squirming and flopping, but the Herron held it tight in its beak, leapt out of the water and flew over to the bank directly in from of the patio where we were eating lunch.  The Herron flipped the fish around a few times to where the head of fish was facing down his beak, and then swallowed it in one big gulp to the amusement of most of the folks watching this whole thing go on.

Meanwhile, the other fish had gotten back together and starting chasing the school of minnows around again.  As their schoolmate was being eaten they had driven the minnows near the bank and had them trapped in the shallow water.  It looked like they were having a good meal.  About this time the Herron finished his first catch and then went back for seconds.  It jumped into the air, flapped its wings about 3 times, and again dove toward the school of fish, but just before it hit the water it appeared that the fish saw it and they panicked again.  In trapping the minnows they were close to the bank and couldn’t dive away from the danger.  Once the Herron went after them again it had them pushed up and trapped against the bank also and they didn't have anywhere to go to get away.  They looked like a ball of churning water as they tried to not be the next one selected for lunch.  All you could see was white froth, fins, tails, and silver streaks as the fish jumped and twisted to get away from the Herron.  The Herron hit the water and deftly snatched a similar sized fish as the one it got before, again flew to the bank near where we were eating lunch, again arranged the fish to where it was facing down it's beak, and again swallowed it whole to the dismay of one of the folks on the patio.  As the Herron turned the fish up and swallowed it a lady shrieked at what she saw.  This startled the Herron causing it to jump back into the air and fly back down the lake where it perched on a floating log in the cove just down from the Flatwater near where it had come from.  The fish also seemed to have had enough about that time and went to deeper water after the second member of their group was picked as lunch.  That ended our Wild Kingdom moment for the day.