What Luck!

When I have the urge take some pictures and have limited time or no particular destination in mind, I head to the park near our house. There are so many ducks, geese, swans, and cormorants living down there that I can usually find something worth pointing the camera at. It's where I go to practice capturing birds in flight. I went down the other day thinking my primary subject would be the baby ducks, geese and swans that are now arriving. There were none just out in plain view in the pond, so I took a walk around to the far side to check a backwater area where I've found some in the past.

I found one family of ducks and some turtles but nothing else. I was disappointed because they were all in shadow and I wasn't able to get anything worth keeping. As I started back, I noticed something larger and brighter at the far side of this little backwater pond. I had my hunch as to what it was and if I was right, I was going to have to be very sneaky to get a shot at it.

From most points on the trail, I didn't have a clear view because of dense vegetation. But, I finally found a break in the trees and shrubs and I was RIGHT! It was a black crowned night heron.

I've only seen these at a fairly significant distance and they spook easily. But this was my lucky day. Not only was he relatively close, but he was also fishing intently for quite a long time. I'm embarrassed to reveal how many shots I took of this bird but the resulting images were worth it.

This is a series I was fortunate enough to catch. I know there's a little motion blur, it was not a bright area and I was pushing my camera to the low light limit for hand holding. But in this case, I think it works.