After a walk through some woodland, I came to the edge of a summer meadow. It was a turlough that had almost dried completely, save for a few water pools here and there. While I was still at the treeline, I saw a grey heron pop its head up from one of the pools and then walk over to another pool.
After a few minutes, it emerged with a fish struggling in its beak. The heron took off, flew around in circles for a bit before landing on a tree nearby. There, it swallowed the fish after ten or fifteen minutes – it was probably waiting for the fish to finally expire first.
The fish – which looked like a perch – was unlucky. The remaining pools were quite small, and it had probably survived for several weeks trapped in the pool – it has been a dry autumn so far. I took these pictures on Sunday afternoon, and that evening, it began raining in Galway and didn’t stop for 48 hours. By the end of this weekend, the meadow will begin to flood again (it is part of the Coole Lough catchment) and the fish will have a better chance of evading the herons.