The Early Bird Gets The …

It’s still hot but there’s a sense of autumn in the air. Some of the trees are starting to drop leaves and the Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) are ‘showing up’ again. I don’t see them much during the summer in the last week or so they have started to appear again. This morning I saw five. Only one was in the open. Most were hanging in the woods at the lake shore hunting. They are shy and retreat into the woods if I slow down or stop.

This one, however, was preoccupied with hunting. I stopped a fair way past it and floated slowly in with the breeze. Just after I took this photo it caught something on the shore, not in the water. I think it may have been a frog judging by the amount of effort it had to expend to swallow it.
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