Kingfisher

Last year when our pond was new we added 20 feeder fish (very tiny goldfish). They disappeared. We added 20 more. They disappeared. We added 20 more, plus two koi, and one larger gold fish from a friend's pond. They all disappeared. Having had fish before I was pretty sure they were all hunkered down in the bottom of the pond, waiting for warmer water. But, we were impatient. We now had 60+ fish in our pond. A few floated, but very few, so in actuality we probably had about 55 fish. All winter the pond showed no sign of fish. This spring, once it warmed up, they began, slowly, to come to the surface. We could never get an accurate count but we were sure we had at least 40 fish from the previous year and a batch of new babies. We had plenty of fish. In fact, we were now concerned that our pond was over-stocked.

Well, not to worry. Just this morning I heard a rattling and saw the flash of a bird flying up to our roof. A few moments later I heard the rattling again and watched in fascination as the same bird dove into the pond and came up with a goldfish in its beak. A Kingfisher has discovered our pond. Eating is good!