Yearling

black crowned night heron.

       That's two consecutive mornings I made it to the riverwalk to get my therapeutic dose of nature listening to and watching the wild life whilst trying to ignore the traffic noise.

       I usually see the muskrats, beavers, and mule deer; rabbits, and if I'm lucky a live skunk (they're usually seen as road kill). This morning I was wondering if I would see any activity. But the beavers were about; I counted four. Whilst standing there watching them, and listening to the birds, this heron flew up. The main photo isn't sharply focussed but the extra I managed by luck to be reasonably sharp. The beaver shots were hopeless; too much noisy vegetation around them grabbed focus.. One of the frustrations of auto-focus and modern  digital cameras is not having the ground glass focusing aid and my eyes aren't quite good enough to focus manually. Any expert advice that might help me?