Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My system is more successful now than at any time in the past, with one fish loss to date and that was due to the fish leaping out of the pond.

However...

Yesterday I saw a huge splash in the pond and went to investigate - it looked bigger than a fish. After a while, it surfaced... A baby heron!!! About the size of a rat. It had got through the mesh above the water, and now couldn't escape.

I have no idea how it got into our backyard. We're in the middle of a town with the nearest water roughly 1km away. This little guy was way to small to fly. Anyway, it was too small to have eaten any more than one or two of my trout, but what worries me is if it had been brought here by Mummy or Daddy Heron... They could really clean up in my system if they wanted to!!!

Took a while to catch the bird because whenever it surfaced, it saw us and got scared, so kept diving back down. I just had to treat it like a fish and eventually netted it...

The worst part was my wife had left the camera at a friend's place so I have no evidence. By the time I returned from my Grandma's place (with her camera!) the Fauna Rescue people had already come to take the chick away...

How funny. A few days ago I had a beautiful and HUGE white egret in the pasture above my big empty fish tank- I guess he was waiting for us to fill it up with fish.