"Steve and Lisa" wrote in message ...
Well it's the morning after.....we are quite lucky the only one who was
eaten (he/she probably does not feel lucky) is the smaller of the two Calico
Fantails.

Question: The five remaining are staying low......will they start swimming
about like before or are they traumatized for life now?? The two 3 inch
Butterfly Koi were so happy and active zipping around all over......now they
all seem to just hang down near the bottom.

The only time we've actually seen a heron at our pond (~2 years back,
IIRC), we saw *no* fish at all for about two days. We thought he'd
eaten the lot. Then they started to show up again -- fortunately,
that year we had an extensive water hyac patch, and I think that's
where they all hid. In the end, we think he may have gotten one or
two of the comets, but none that we would specifically recognize as
missing. The survivors recovered from their fright in about a week.

I happened to have a bunch of scraps of 4" black ABS pipe, so I tossed
those in to provide hiding places. Then just the other weekend, we
found and bought a thing called a "Heron Scarem". It's a styrofoam
pyramid with mirror decals on it, that you float in the middle of the
pond. Supposedly, the herons don't like the reflections that come off
it.

Our pond is too enclosed by tree and house to be very attractive to
herons -- I think they prefer open spaces.

-- Kizhé