Do small herons eat koi fish? (1 Viewer)

[earlytorise]

I was walking around a university campus with an artificial lake near the entrance serving as home to both a fair number of Black-crowned Night Heron and Chinese Pond Heron. I thought that since the lake has koi fish, that's what the herons feed on, and it would cost the university a fair bit to replenish the lost fish every now and then, which I must say would be quite funny.

But today I watched a Chinese Pond Heron foraging on a lawn, presumably for worms - something I should have remembered, given that the famous Japanese Night Heron twitch in this city involved a juvenile endlessly searching for worms in a picnic area.

So I wonder whether that is in fact the main source of food for the birds, that the koi are in no danger from those (small) herons after all. Thinking back, they are quite big to swallow.

 

[Mysticete]

I can't imagine them tackling adult or even half grown Koi. Almost certainly they are probably going after smaller fish, frogs, and what have you that are probably also in the ponds