Bird Condos

This morning I went on a bird photography hike at Heron Rookery Nature Preserve at Lake Renwick in Plainfield, Illinois. Lake Renwick is the site of a gravel mine which operated for about 90 years before the Will County Forest Preserve District began acquiring the property. Great blue herons have nested in the area for 70 years, and the Forest Preserve built wooden structures on islands in the lake to provide expanded nesting.

Great egrets (white birds), double-crested cormorants (black), and great blue herons (blue gray birds mostly at the top of the structures) nest on the islands. There are at least two black-crowned night herons in the photo; from the front they look like penguins. One is 1/3 from the bottom and 40% from the left standing on a cut off branch. The other is almost directly below it 1/8 from the bottom.

Extra: night heron is more visible in bottom left corner of this crop. Also there is a pic of an American white pelican, part of a group stopping through on their northward migration.