Heron Hunt

I almost didn't show you the thing I have for you today. I encountered this Great Blue Heron at the pond at the back of Woodland Hills Nature Park. This was the first day of the major changes I made to my camera settings, and the results were not very good. I had the sharpness and the ISO both turned up way too far, and it gave the pictures an unreal look.

The heron almost looks like it was a wood carving or something. The pictures look more like a painting than photos. I had to enhance these photos quite a bit to get them to look good. I just had to show this bird to you. Most importantly, I wanted to tell the story of what happened. So here we go!

I was taking pictures of a couple of ducks that were splashing around in the water when my camera batteries began to go dead. I decided I had enough pictures of them anyway, so I walked back to the front side of the pond where a bench was, so I could change my batteries.

I got really lucky right then. Because just as I turned the camera back on I saw these huge wings pass over me! This big bird flew silently from directly over me to the other end of the pond. It perched on a big log sticking up out of the water. I just got lucky enough to get one picture of it while it was flying.

After a few more pictures, just in case it flew away, I turned back to the trail that runs behind the trees and around the pond. I ran as fast as I could down that trail, ignoring everything in my path. I had to get to the other side of the pond and closer to this majestic bird!

I was glad that the pond and the path were separated by trees so the water birds wouldn't see me running like a madman right in their direction. I was still a little worried that they would somehow detect my violent footfalls. When I got out of the trees I was relieved to see that I had not disturbed them. The trees had hidden me once again.

I quickly began taking more pictures of the heron. I even got a few more of the ducks. I had some good closeup shots like the one you see at the top of this post. Through the view screen on the camera, everything looked great. I went home happy thinking that my pictures would be great. At least I got a record of what I had seen, even if I was wrong about the picture quality.

After all of that I'm glad most of my camera issues have been worked out. The next time I see this bird, I think I'll do much better. I've already seen it three times, so I think there's a good chance I'll get to see it again. Then I'll show you some good pictures of the bird, and this little heron adventure will be complete.

On a side note, I have something new in my posts. Some of the links in the post lead to useful information at Wikipedia. I'll be trying that out for awhile. So if you want to learn more about herons, just click the link. I hope it's helpful for you.