(Editor's Note: This is the second and last of two articles about bird life in a Woodbury pond.)

This August, the pond in the condo where I live became a mini birding hot spot. The pond had four Forster's terns, which stayed for a few days and then left. Some weeks later the fish eaters arrived: two green herons, two great egrets, at least one great blue heron, and a male and female kingfisher. There was also a family of four mallards and a sandpiper called a yellowlegs. Like a kid coming out early on Christmas day for presents, I went to the pond every morning for the birds.

One morning I got to the pond early to find I was the only one there. In less than a minute the shape of the great egret appeared overhead. Was it passing by or would it land? The long white bird started to circle coming closer and closer. Its great white wings, translucent in the morning sun, which span some 51 inches, were raised in the center and but tapered and flat toward the tips, like some aerodynamic 21st century parachute. Filling my binoculars, the bird appeared closer than any great egret had before. Awesome. So taken was I at the sight of those wings that all I could think was that how I felt must have been something like what the first indigenous people felt when they saw the billowing white sails of Columbus' trio of ships as they appeared out of the blue.

At dusk one evening my wife and I went down to the pond to see if the belted kingfisher, her favorite bird, and any of the herons and egrets, now regulars at the pond, were there. Halfway down the pond, on a branch in a willow tree was the male kingfisher. The kingfisher is 13-inch perching bird with a chunky body, a head too large for the body and a dagger-like black bill too long and thick for its head. It was built to spear fish by swooping down on them from a perch. The kingfisher's eyes are coal black and gleam in the sun. However, it has large white dots between each eye. If one looks at the bird straight ahead, the bird appears to have white eyes. Ghost eyes are what I call those white dots.

While this kingfisher did much more perching than fishing, I saw it on numerous occasions fly from its perch crossing the water to change perches. Only once did I see him catch something. He came off his branch fast and plunged to the water then went back to a leafy willow perch and struggled a bit with something plump in its bill. Finally the bird swallowed its snack and gave a bracing shake.

I'm used to seeing green herons, which look more wine colored than green, in the grass and shallow water at a pond's edge. The heron can stand motionless, but when it walks, the bird bends each leg back slowly at the joint at impossible angles while the long feet barely skim the water's surface or sometimes go into it. Those feet and long, bent, pale green toes resemble giant mechanical yard rakes. Stealth is its MO.

I'm not used to seeing a green heron circled by the foliage of a tree, which hang over the water like an oxbow, framed against a backdrop of fading yellow. But there it was, giving us world class views through my scope. A Shakespearean actor couldn't have asked for a better stage setting. The green heron looked straight at us over the top of its straight and sharp bill, through fierce eyes circled by yellow. With its short tail twitching up and down, the bird began walking a branch stealthily, putting one light olive green leg in front of the other, in a pigeon-toed walk, so its claws could firmly grasp the branch.

Now with its claws firmly grasping a limb, the arboreal heron, bent down, stretching its body like a short thick hose with a long dagger-like bill at the end. It was scanning the water and the shoreline, and any prey below might not have known that danger was lurking just above.

Minutes later on the ground the heron was about to have its pre-bedtime snack from the pond, its local 7-Eleven. The meal was perhaps a snail. The heron held its bill open, which looked like a pair of chopsticks, holding the creature in it. With its eyes focused resolutely straight ahead, the bird made a series of lightening-like moves flashing a dark pink mouth. It looked as if this is going to be a long struggle. The heron inched the thing back and it simply disappeared enveloped in the bird's throat.

I leave the heron at the edge of the water peering down at its mirror image. It should be a while before the bird gets another meal and it has more patience than I do. I'll be back tomorrow morning though, because at the pond every morning is like Christmas.