Is this actually  water ?

What is called a mirage?

A mirage is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. The word comes to English via the French mirage, from the Latin mirare, meaning "to look at, to wonder at". This is the same root as for "mirror" and "to admire". Also, it has it's roots in the Arabic mirage.

How does a mirage occur?

Cold air is denser than warm air and has therefore a greater refractive index. As light passes from colder air across a sharp boundary to significantly warmer air, the light rays bend away from the direction of the temperature gradient. When light rays pass from hotter to colder, they bend toward the direction of the gradient. If the air near the ground is warmer than that higher up, the light ray bends in a concave, upward trajectory.

Once the ray reaches the viewer’s eye, the visual cortex interprets it as if it traces back along a perfectly straight "line of sight". This line is however at a tangent to the path the ray takes at the point it reaches the eye. The result is that an "inferior image" of the sky above appears on the ground. The viewer may incorrectly interpret this sight as water which is reflecting the sky, which is, to the brain, a more reasonable and common occurrence.

n the case where the air near the ground is cooler than that higher up, the light rays curve downward, producing a "superior image".