Gotcha at Last, Great Blue Heron!!!

Long-time readers of this photo blog may remember my failed attempts to photograph herons. I've seen one quite a few times at Millbrook Marsh, one of my favorite morning haunts. But I've only photographed that bird once, from a distance, on a very very cold morning, and it wasn't one of my best shots, so it didn't end up on these pages. Photographing a great blue has become a sort of quest for me. The bird is something I pursue, but never actually attain. It's become a symbol of sorts.

But on Thursday afternoon, my quest was achieved, at long last! It was a gorgeous afternoon, warm and springy, and the sun was out, and there were all these puffy white clouds floating around. It almost looked like heaven. I stopped by the lily pond at the Arboretum and photographed some reflections: one of my favorite things to do when the sky is doing neat things.

And then I drove home. And what should be waiting for me, at a little pond that I love? The long-sought-out great blue heron! I had spotted the bird in the morning on my drive to work, had thought it might be a heron, but it was all hunched up in the shallows and I didn't get a good look. I thought to myself - Was that an egret or maybe . . . a heron? But there was no time to stop, and I didn't want to scare the pond's morning birds away.

On my afternoon trip past, though, it was quite clear what the bird was. It was standing on the bank, between the pond and the road, strutting its stuff, walking that ridiculously cool, knee-knocking walk they have. I almost laughed out loud, like a child, to see it!

And since the bird was standing on the bank, I knew that if I pulled the car in right by the pond, I'd startle it away. So I drove past, and I turned around in a little church parking lot and came back. And I pulled into a little farm lane across the road for just a few minutes, and I took a bunch of pictures. My hands were almost shaking, I was so excited.

I got some closer and more detailed shots of the heron than this, and it was tempting to use one of those. But what really tickled me the most was that it felt like this heron had finally come to visit ME, on a little pond that I love and have photographed often (for instance, here and here). And so the shot that I've chosen is the great blue heron standing by "my" pond, looking regal and surveying its kingdom, like a bird straight out of a picture book.

Now, I admit that when I finally got these photos of a great blue heron, which has been something of a quest for me, and I got them home and downloaded them and saw that they were clear, I got a great big happy photographer smile, and I might have even done a bit of fist-pumping! There are probably more appropriate songs to accompany the image of this wonderful bird, but here is my fist-pumping choice, my touchdown dance, if you will. Queen, with We Are the Champions.

P.S. This is also the same pond where this little happy-ending goose story occurred. And I add this link as a footnote because . . . on this very same morning, two of the geese (maybe two of the geese in the original story?) were also hanging out on the little pond with the heron!