A HERON has been caught red-handed raiding a home-owner’s fish pond at night.
Grouville resident Jeanette Isaacs said she had set up a night-vision camera after recently noticing that the water feature’s goldfish had diminished in number.
She said: ‘We have always had herons taking fish. We have loads of goldfish, so a few going missing to a feed a heron is not a problem. But it’s easy pickings for them so typically they keep coming back every day.
‘We have a net which we cover the pond with. It doesn’t look attractive so we only put it out when we see a heron showing an interest in the pond.
‘A heron has been hanging around in the field behind the garden for a few weeks, but we didn’t see it near the garden so we didn’t net the pond.’
During the bird’s first filmed visit, the camera – which Ms Isaacs usually uses to film hedgehogs and other nocturnal creatures – caught the heron taking a big goldfish ‘it could only just swallow’.
She added: ‘It had probably been doing this for weeks and spending the day in the field digesting its meal. We netted the pond the next day.’
The crafty creature was not so lucky the second time round, and was scared off by movement in the house and lights.
On the third night, however, it returned twice and tried to ‘get to the fish off-camera as the net was collapsed onto the water in places’.
Whether the bird will have more luck next time around remains to be seen…
