Be careful what you wish for. . .

The Green Heron. A kind of cartoonish character, don't you think?

Compact and resolute and motionless, Gary awaits his prey.

When we added a bag of algae-eating goldfish to our pond restoration project, we commented here that it would be nice to get things cleaned up to a point that the waters would attract an occasional fishing heron, who might drop in from time to time. What we had in mind was one of those stunning white, long-legged, graceful-looking Great Egret types that you see in the winter post cards from Florida.
We got Gary.
Gary is a stout bull-necked, short legged, chestnut-breasted Green Heron who has been fishing our waters regularly since we introduced the algae-eaters. Acting like he owns the place, yesterday he ran off a visitor in a feisty airborne territorial exchange.
Gary sure can fish. We watched through binoculars as he stood perfectly still, staring into our recently clarified waters. Silence. Then BAM, his neck extended and his beak stabbed through the surface and came back instantly with a struggling goldfish. He jawed down on it for a bit, softening and breaking it up, then zip, down the gullet.
This costly breakfast seemed to satisfy the odd creature, soon he flapped away in an ungainly, awkward flight path, to do whatever Green Herons do when they aren't fishing.
At first we thought this was a coot or some pre-historic monster bird, but our personal naturalist Greg Johnson was quick to identify Gary from his mug shot. The Minnesota DNR web site provides some interesting notes:

Careful. You'll scare the chalk out of him.

Unlike most water birds, green herons use bait to catch their food. They present worms and twigs to lure small fish closer to the shoreline.
When startled, green herons fly away quickly. They make an alarm call that sounds like skeow, and leave a small white trail of bird droppings, which has earned the green heron the nickname "chalk line."
Green herons nest in small trees and bushes near water. The male selects the nesting place and starts building. Later he brings sticks to the female, which finishes the nest. Sometimes green herons remodel an old egret or black-crowned night heron nest. Both parents incubate the eggs.

Six species of herons live in Minnesota during spring and summer: great blue heron, black-crowned night heron, green heron, great egret, American bittern, and least bittern.

We got Gary. He's named after the fellow who long ago patiently tried to teach Stan how to fish.