The previous otter picture was taken in our back yard on the salt marsh. It was taken in the spring when the eels were running (you might have noticed one of the otters munching on an eel)! You might ask, what do all these animals have to do with turtles? Well, they all live in and around the salt marsh—the diamondback terrapin’s home—and we have to look at SOMETHING while we’re waiting for the terrapins to show up LOL! This spring has been so cold, we’ve only seen a few terrapins out and about from a distance, so far. My (Karen’s) favorite marsh bird is the black-crowned night heron, pictured left from our “front yard” salt marsh window. This photo was taken recently and it was the first time we had witnessed a black-crowned night heron hunting not only in the daytime (rather rare) but hunting along the side of the road for, presumably, rats. We have a regular great American egret who does just that (I watched him mimic the waving of the nearby grasses with his neck and then grab a rat (muskrat?) and watched him SWALLOW IT WHOLE I could not believe it!), but had never seen a black-crowned night heron hunt like this. Scroll down for another kind of heron…
