Great Blue Heron Revisited
This afternoon, I went on another walk to the duck pond to see if there were any interesting birds. The ducks and geese were there in great numbers, but there was little sign of anything else. For quite a while, I stood on the spit downstream from the bridge looking for any sign of the Great Blue Heron. But I saw nothing at all.

So, I decided to look at the smaller pond on the other side of the bridge, where most of the ducks and geese were congregated. As I walked up the slope, I caught sight of a small bird flying across the pond. It was the spotted sandpiper that I saw the other day. But after one very poor picture, it flew up into the trees and out of my sight. I explored upstream but there was no sign of it.

I gave up and returned to the bridge, and there, at the end of the spit, almost exactly where I'd been standing, was the Great Blue Heron.
Even though the bird was filling my viewfinder, I tried to get closer by climbing down the bank on the north side of the bridge. I was hidden from the bird by a branch of a tree, and it was clearly intent on something in the water. But there were some ducks who were disturbed by my approach and once again, they disturbed the object of my interest. But it didn't fly very far, so I pursued it to the north bank of the pond.

I was able to get just the one shot at left before it flew into a tree.
I returned to the spit of land again and was able to get some pictures across the pond as the bird perched on a branch. It preened itself. Took a few looks around, and even seemed to be eating some of the leaves -- do they do that? I thought they only ate fish.
Remembering the last time I'd watched this bird for an hour from across the water, I decided to see if I could get closer to it on the north bank. And indeed I could. That's how I got the picture on the right, which was taken while the bird was still standing on the same branch. Once again, though, it decided to move on to get away from me, but again only flew a short way along the bank, allowing me to take the two pictures below, in which, the bird is in the same place. I'm the one who moved to get the two angles.