Wicked Cool Bird Story.

[shilala]

While Lisa and I were in the Dominican on our love-fest, we spent a good bit of time watching a bird from our terrace. It liked to fish in the pond out back that was slap loaded with little fish.
Whenever we walked by the pond, those fish would clamor to see who was coming and whether or not they'd get a handout.
One afternoon before dinner, I asked Lisa to go down and feed the fish with me. We took some club crackers from the minibar and sat on the edge of the water mushing them up and tossing pieces in.
Surprisingly, as soon as the fish got riled up, this goofy bird came and sat right beneath us, about two feet away.

We figured he was just trying to get in on the cracker action, but what he was doing was picking up the pieces of cracker, then setting them on top of the water waiting for a fish to get it so he could eat the fish.
We weren't sure that's what was going on at first, but when the half dozen turtles would get too overbearing, he'd pick up his crumb, move away, and sit it on the water again. If it started floating away, he'd pick it up and move it closer to himself. If it went mushy and sank, I'd throw him some more and he'd get a new one.
We watched intently, and it took only a couple minutes for him to nab a fish. When he did, he walked up on the bank, then spun it around so he could swallow it correctly. Apparently he knew if he dropped it back in the water, dinner was over.

Even after watching all this, we weren't really sure that what we were seeing was what we thought we saw, and we ran out of crackers (or so we thought, turned out I was sitting on some more). No matter, this bird was still hungry, so he grabbed a snail shell and continued placing it on the water, grabbing it and moving it when the turtles were screwing up his fishing, and ultimately caught himself dinner again. Lisa even managed to catch the whole business on video on her iphone. It was quite a thing to behold.

Today I went and found out what this critter was, it's a Green Heron. Why they call it green is a mystery to me when it's black and red, but whatever. Also, it has a long neck. The pics at Wiki are very deceiving. It keeps it's neck scrunched up, so it's hard to tell.
That Wiki article I linked says "Sometimes they drop food, insects, or other small objects on the water's surface to attract fish, making them one of the few known tool-using species", which made me realize we witnessed something really special, something we'll probably never see again in our lives, and something few people have probably ever witnessed. That's why I wanted to tell you guys about it.