We found a pair of herons down on the pond the other day. They were calmly strolling along the shore-line at an hour before sunset on a mostly cloudy day. They were ignorant or just didn’t care that a human and a dog were poking around on the shore not 10 yards away.

The first one, shown in the images here, was closest. A few minutes after the first image, he dipped his beak into the water and pulled out a fish that must have been as big as my forearm. This was quite shallow water, so I think he must have caught the fish earlier and plopped it here for safekeeping. After dropping it back into the water and then pulling it out again, as noted in the second image here, he started swallowing it. Once he got the meal swallowed halfway, he flipped his head up and swallowed the remainder with gravity assist.

The last image shows him (I think it was a male) with the fish in his long neck, now expanded to accommodate the meal. It really was a big fish.