Heron Gator Story

This sequence of photographs tells a little story of a heron and an alligator at the Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve in Fort Myers, Florida, on May 4th, 2008.

About 5 - 10 minutes before the picture above, the heron was on the other side of the pond. I was getting ready to leave until I saw the heron start to move slowly, which I thought it was getting ready to stab it's beak into the water for a small meal. However, an alligator, that I didn't even know was there, lunged out of the water to try to get the heron.

As you can see in the picture above, the heron got a hold of a baby alligator, which just happened to be one of the babies belonging to the gator that tried to eat the bird. The baby gator started yelping and the mother gator swam across the pond to come to it's aid. The gator flew off with the baby gator in it's beak and the mother gator again swam after it. The whole show lasted about 45 minutes with some amazing action of the mother gator lunging out of the water to try to get the heron. Eventually, after the baby gator died, the heron swallowed it, but the mother still kept going after it. At one point, I think the mother was just really mad and even thought about going for an egret that was near the edge of the water. Finally, the heron flew off, and I had to go to work. It was quite a show!