08 Feb 16. With today's absolutely BORING bowl game, as they so often are, featuring a cat and a horse, I thought I'd add to the menagerie with a bird. This one is of a feeding bird, more specifically one feeding at the peak of a very low tide, a -3 to be exact. The Great Blue Herons in the area I think mark their calenders for the extreme low tides that occur every June. Among their prize catches in these low ides are gunnel, an eel-like fish found in the intertidal zone primarily here in the PNW, but they can range to depth of more than 600 feet. They are safe from the big feathered predators except for these June minus tides when the seabed, generally under 20 to 30 feet of water, is exposed. When that happens these fish take a real beating as the birds love to eat them. I've seen one bird in the course of an hour eat a dozen or more which has to be hard on the species, sort of like our fishing boats scouring the sea. It is always a several minute battle between bird and fish, with the fish constantly wrapping its body around the bill of the birds, but eventually the bird wins, in part I'm sure because it keeps the fish out of water. It is quite the scene to watch, and in this case you get to see the fish in an extended position about to wrap itself around the bird's bill. This image is best viewed at 100%. The base image was severely cropped, then I added a small amount of micro contrast and lighted the eye just a tad. Nikon D300s; 80 -400; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 8.