Great blue heron
Images copyright by Mark A. Chappell
Great blue herons, with their large size, stately demeanor, and (sometimes) confiding nature, are staples of nature photography, but I've always found them to be a great challenge. When I see them they tend to be sitting in tangled, obscuring vegetation or on ugly, litter-strewn mudflats, or in lovely poses in terrible light. These birds offered reasonable opportunities. I photographed the heron in the upper pictures at a beach in Florida (it was nicknamed 'Nixon' by fishing regulars because of its skulking 'I am not a crook' attitude). Below are other pictures from several Florida locations, including a sun-basking bird and a heron that has speared an 'oscar' (a feral South American cichlid fish) in the Everglades. The herons in the other photos were standing in a tidal channel in a salt marsh near Palo Alto, California, at Santee Lakes, near San Diego, California, and at Bolsa Chica wetlands in coastal Orange County, California. The flying bird at the bottom of the page is a juvenile.
