Anhinga With Large Fish - Lesson Learned

Recently I was visiting Circle B Bar Reserve when I came across an anhinga that had just caught a large fish. Anhingas are also called "snake birds" by some because they love to stick their slender long neck out of the water while their body is still submerged and they can look like a snake poking out of the lake from a distance.

Well, in this instance, this particular anhinga had gotten himself a mouthful of fish. In fact, here is the two shots I took shortly after the fish had been caught:

As you can see, the bird and fish are strongly backlit so I had to open up the exposure to get as much detail as I could without totally washing out the background. So anyway, after I got the shots I wanted, I thought to myself that this anhinga had to be a little crazy and there was absolutely no way that he would ever get that fish down such a slender throat.

So I wandered off down the trail for about 15 minutes and took a few more photos of a willing tri-colored heron in the marsh. On my way back I passed by the anhinga and was shocked to see that he was in the last stages of actually swallowing that fish whole.

I have to tell you that I was stunned as I never thought it would be possible. But I will never doubt another anhinga again!

One more lesson is learned - stick around and see how situations like this turn out. It would have been an interesting series of photos to show how that anhinga progressively swallowed that fish in one piece. I missed it this time, but I'll be on the lookout for the next opportunity!

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