Missed Opportunity

I was walking by Chandler Pond this afternoon and stopped by to see the cormorants. There's a little flattened clearing along the edge where you can get right up to the waterline and see the rock they like to hang out on, which is where I usually go when I'm there. There was one cormorant and what looked like a young gull of some kind sitting on the rock, and the cormorant slipped into the water a moment after I got there. They swim very low in the water, spend about a minute or so underwater on each dive, and come up perhaps five or ten feet away. I stepped down right to the waterline to get a better look at the gull, and then suddenly a massive bird jumped into the air and flew off across the pond: it was a great blue heron, and the ripples from where it stood in the water were less than ten feet away. I hadn't seen it at all, which is a terrible shame since I've never been that close to one before.

I watched where the heron went, and then walked around the pond, avoiding the tremendous amount of goose crap. Happily, it had landed in another spot that wasn't closed off by reeds or shrubs, just under the branches of a small tree. It actually looked a lot paler than it had when I saw it flying away, but it spotted me as I tried creeping closer and flew off again before I could get a really good look.

It may not have been a great blue heron, but I don't know of any other heron species that live in the area that have the same general size, shape, and color -- and it definitely was not an egret -- but of course, that doesn't mean there isn't one out there I just haven't heard of.