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There’s a municipal park about a five minute drive from our home where we walk our dog a couple of times a day. The park features a small pond. At times the pond attracts aquatic birds. In the winter, for example, numerous migratory ducks reside there.
Our intense hot weather has produced a seasonal algae bloom in the pond and it is now filled with green and brackish water. Only a handful of ducks continue to hang out there. Recently, the ducks were joined by another bird. This is a Black-crowned Night Heron.
Black-crowned Night Herons are wading birds that typically make their livings by hunting for aquatic creatures and small fish in shallow water. One often finds one of these birds standing still in very shallow water, waiting for prey to swim within reach.
I’ve observed this heron several times over the past week and it is definitely not attempting to hunt in the pond’s opaque green water. It’s doing something else, and apparently succeeding at it judging from its extended stay in the park.
This heron is hunting for gophers, Botta’s Pocket Gopher, to be exact. The park adjacent to the pond is home to dozens of these little rodents. They dig burrows that resemble tiny craters, from which they make frequent and brief forays to harvest surrounding grass and ground cover.
I’ve watched the heron standing absolutely still and very close to a gopher’s burrow entrance. It waits, patiently, for an unwary gopher to exit its burrow and to become vulnerable to attack.
I’ve yet to see the heron seize a gopher but I have no doubt that it has done so. Otherwise it would have moved on in search of another location that provided something for it to eat.
That the heron is hunting gophers and not frogs or fish is a tribute to its adaptability. This behavior isn’t unique. A couple of years ago one of the Black-crowned Night Heron’s much larger cousins, a Great Blue Heron, spent several weeks at the same park, also hunting gophers.
Images made with a Canon R5, Canon RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1 IS L zoom lens, M setting (auto ISO). First image, ISO 1250, f6.3 @ 1/800. Second image, ISO 4000, f7.1 @ 1/1600. Third image, ISO 3200, f7.1 @ 1/1600. Fourth image, ISO 2000, f7.1 @ 1/1600.
Sonoran Images 
Herons hunting gophers! Who knew?
I’ve seen the smaller European Heron in Ireland catch and eat a fieldmouse. I’ve heard that they will kill and eat ducklings too and certainly ducks are very wary around them and seagulls will dive at them if they perch high.