By Vladimir Brezina
To fish, you need a lot of patience…
… and hope that, sooner or later, you’ll get lucky!
.
.
.
.
.
More Florida fishing birds are here.
Copyright
Wind Against Current by Vladimir Brezina and Johna Till Johnson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Authors
Vladimir Brezina (RIP)
... kayaked the waters around New York for more than 15 years in his red Feathercraft folding kayak. He was originally from (the former) Czechoslovakia and lived in the U.K. and California before settling down in New York. He was a neuroscientist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He died in 2016.Johna Till Johnson
... is a kayaker and technology researcher at Nemertes Research. She's an erstwhile engineer, particle physicist, and science fiction writer. She was born in California and has lived in Italy, Norway, Hawaii, and a few other places. She currently resides in New York City.Recent Comments
Harry Itagaki on Sheltering at Sea, Part 3: Sta… Kat at travelgardene… on Sheltering at Sea, Part 2: Esc… CurlsnSkirls on Sheltering at Sea, Part 3: Sta… Johna Till Johnson on Sheltering at Sea, Part 3: Sta… CurlsnSkirls on Sheltering at Sea, Part 3: Sta… Johna Till Johnson on Sheltering at Sea, Part 1: Tak… Johna Till Johnson on Sheltering at Sea, Part 1: Tak… Johna Till Johnson on Sheltering at Sea, Part 3: Sta… Jack Atkinson on Sheltering at Sea, Part 3: Sta… Marilyn Albright on Sheltering at Sea, Part 1: Tak… Johna Till Johnson on Sheltering at Sea, Part 2: Esc… maristravels on Sheltering at Sea, Part 2: Esc… Johna Till Johnson on Sheltering at Sea, Part 2: Esc… CurlsnSkirls on Sheltering at Sea, Part 2: Esc… Steve Abbott on Sheltering at Sea, Part 1: Tak… RSS Feeds
Wind Against Current 
Beautiful fotos!!! Here in my place i need a strong tele to watch them, they are too shy. People, who have a little garden pond with fishes, Kois f.e. , don’t like theme very much, but i love them, especially the black feather on their head :) .
Nice greetings Anja
LikeLike
Every time I go down to Florida, I am amazed by how unshy the birds there are. They let you get really close…
Thanks, Anja!!
LikeLike
Not too shy!
LikeLike
You might even say, quite aggressive… :-)
LikeLike
:D , it’s again the best example for it always depends from where you write the comment ;) . And i’m sure, in this case the photograph has more fun than the fisherman :roll: … :)
LikeLike
Wait, it’s getting complicated! We’ve got three parties involved: the fisherman, the bird, and the photographer… or four if you include the fish. Who has the most fun?
LikeLike
I am sure, the photograph :) ! For the fish, i really think, it’s no fun :( .
But the Makros from their eyes – incredible for me, beautiful!
But, an attack from these birds, i also wouldn’t prefer, so you’re right, ok;) !
Have a nice day with nice motives, less dangerous :) …
LikeLike
Thank you for clearing that up, Anja! ;-) :-)
LikeLike
fun photos and commentary, thanks vlad! our birds don’t let you come that close … when we were in the canoe yesterday (with little electric motor) they still flew before we got within good photo range … however i got a few … plus thinking of you i shot a fisherman in his Hobie, which i will put in the next post :-)
LikeLike
I look forward to seeing it! :-)
(… although shooting people is a bit controversial in the US these days…)
LikeLike
oh i can imagine … it will probably get like that here too … we always follow your lead if there is money to be made from it!
LikeLike
Following the US is not always the wisest strategy… ;-)
LikeLike
Great photos!
LikeLike
Thank you!!
LikeLike
hehe…this is very cute fishing scene….
LikeLike
:-)
LikeLike
How can these birds be so not afraid of people? Never had a heron so close to me outside of a zoo before… They’d rather fly away if I tried to come close…
LikeLike
They’ve learned to live with people there much like pigeons do in urban environments—they’ve learned that people won’t bother them, so they come close to wait in the interstices of the human activities for scraps to fall off the table…
LikeLike
Great captures, Vladi!
LikeLike
Thanks!!
LikeLike
I swear, I can’t get within 100 miles of a Great Blue Heron with my camera, and here they are posing for you!
LikeLike
Go to Florida—it’s a paradise if you want to take close-up photos of birds…
LikeLike
When I fished somewhere like that, I found the Herons very intimidating, especially when they managed to get on an eye-line higher than mine!
LikeLike
They are big birds, especially when they spread their wings…
LikeLike
:)
LikeLike
This makes my day! Great Blue Herons are our friends and companions in the Puget Sound, too, though they don’t typically come for feeding.
LikeLike
They are everywhere—up here around NYC as well, although in the city we mostly have egrets…
LikeLike
Wonderful photos. Looks like you had a lot of competition with the birds for the fish. :)
BE ENCOURAGED! BE BLESSED!
LikeLike
Once the fish are caught by their human attendants, the herons move in for the feast…
LikeLike
Fantastic captures.
LikeLike
Thanks so much!!
LikeLike
Beautiful pictures with wonderful colours!
LikeLike
Glad you like them—thanks, Anna!
LikeLike
Lovely selection of photos!! Love the idea of the birds waiting to be handed some fish!!
LikeLike
Clearly, they get enough to make the waiting worthwhile…
LikeLike
Love the story these photos tell – fishermen are fishermen, whatever the species!
LikeLike
That’s very true! :-)
LikeLike
Sometimes it pays to be friendly ;-). Great shots!
LikeLike
Thanks!!
LikeLike
Did the birds have better success than the humans? More fun to watch I’m sure
LikeLike
The birds are waiting for the humans to hand them the catch… must be wonderful to have the humans so well trained!
LikeLike
Looks like the Heron was posing just for you!
LikeLike
He/she was certainly posing for the cameras!
LikeLike
We watched someone share their bait fish with a heron when we were on vacation. Not only are fishermen (and women) patient, they have big hearts.
LikeLike
Although they might not admit it, I think the fishermen quite like the birds…
LikeLike
The pelicans and herons have quite a racket going. Let the humans do the work.
LikeLike
It’s obviously working for them… behind pretty much every fisherman in Florida there seems to be a heron, patiently waiting…
LikeLike
Especially love the second photo of the three patient fishers, all in a row.
LikeLike
:-) Patience was definitely needed. I didn’t see that woman catch anything the whole time i was there—and so the birds were out of luck too…
LikeLike
Love that cheeky heron in the first pic. I’m really missing my Florida birds.
LikeLike
Yes, they are very special :-)
LikeLike
what can you do but laugh
LikeLike
Indeed! :-)
LikeLike
Rofl at that first photo, where the heron is facing away from the water. Great photos. Do you notice any difference between the Florida and Northern US varieties of great blues? Although it would be hard to tell in February if the heron in Florida is actually just another “snowbird” wintering over down south.
LikeLike
Haven’t noticed any difference, but I don’t have a huge amount of close-up experience with the great blue herons up here in the Northeast. Here they seem to much more shy than they are down in Florida, and are hard to approach. Egrets, on the other hand…
I notice in looking at my Florida birds photos after the fact that most of the birds in them are banded. Interesting…
LikeLike
That is interesting, that they have been banded. I suppose they were easy for the banders to catch (as they seem so unafraid of humans). There was a Canada Goose here with a neck band. It was with a large flock, but noticeably less timid than it’s mate and the rest of the flock. Intuition tells me that perhaps it had been handled a lot by humans, perhaps due to an injury? It was very tame, came right up to the kayak and posed agreeably for photos, such a ham.
LikeLike
We saw cormorants that behaved like that on our most recent Florida trip.
At the end of the second day, we were approaching Sarasota, and suddenly a succession of cormorants flew in, one after another, and plopped themselves down in the water a couple of feet in front of our kayaks. Then they followed us as we paddled along, diving under the boats and rubbing themselves against the hulls expectantly… There were many kayak fishermen in the area who had presumably been feeding them.
Here is Johna telling them that, unfortunately, we had nothing to offer them—
LikeLike
Awesome, and thanks for the link to Johna’s post. I lived in Sarasota for 8 years – I’m an alum of New College – but that was before I became possessed by the herons. (Hard to imagine there was a “before herons.”)
LikeLike
We still have to write up that day, and the following days… The problem is that new trips keep happening :-)
I am so glad to have discovered your site for all things heron-related…
LikeLike
Oh, many thanks for the kind word about finding my herons, and I’m equally happy to have found your site, with all of your kayaking adventures. I like how you and Johna mix it up, including the technical details about the kayak aspects of your outings (such as the boat repair in the Florida trip) and the fascinating photos from your outings.
LikeLike
Speaking of new trips, the outing you two took this past weekend to Sandy Hook was amazing, and the water conditions had such a high degree of difficulty! Great write-up.
LikeLike
It started as a kayaking blog, but soon spread into whatever else we happen to find interesting… Thanks!! :-)
LikeLike
You’re welcome, and that’s part of what makes your blog so good, plus you have two authors, so different and complimentary perspectives,. :-)
LikeLike
Glad you liked our Sandy Hook trip! It wasn’t that difficult, actually, in any technical sense—just a lot of things that suddenly came together, as they often do, to make it a bit more exciting ;-)
LikeLike
You and Johna should submit some of your stories/photos to the various paddler magazines. I spent 14 years in publishing (medtech and electronics, not kayaking unfortunately), and your collective works are interesting enough!
LikeLike
Three of the posts on Wind Against Current (this one, and this, and this) did actually appear in a relatively obscure kayaking magazine that no longer exists…. but yes, we might move in that direction again sooner or later…
LikeLike
Loved the word picture of the whale encounter on the Cape Cod trip.
LikeLike
That was memorable… the one and only time! :-)
LikeLike
Therre will be another, when you least expect it! :-)
LikeLike
Pingback: Here’s Looking at You, Kid – Cee’s Which Way Challenge and Weekly Photo Challenge: One Shot Two Ways | Babsje Heron
Pingback: More Florida Birds | Wind Against Current
Pingback: Weekly Photo Challenge: Extra, Extra | Wind Against Current