This young Great Blue Heron stops by quite often, but not every visit is a good photo op. It can linger just beyond the reach of my lens, or the light can be wrong. I last got some good shots of this two-year-old a month earlier, when it was onshore, and a few yards closer to my window than it was today. At the time, I wrote this:
This young’un in the photo is fickle, constantly flitting from rock to rock, always looking for a better place to fish. It hasn’t yet learned the virtue of patience.
When taking these photos, I ignored my own advice, which is to remain still. As usual, I was shooting from inside the house, through the windows, to avoid spooking the bird. Reflections off the glass got in the way, so I moved about trying to avoid them. I was careful to stay several feet back, but to no avail; the heron caught my motion and abruptly flew off. I dislike disturbing wildlife, and should have known better.
As it did a month earlier, the low autumn sunlight created an effect at once warm and dramatic, spotlighting this magnificent bird like a star performer on stage, singling it out for our grateful adoration and applause.
The photos were taken at midafternoon on December 13, 2012. Several of these are among my best, ever, wildlife photographs.