A couple of herons frequent our ponds. Our dogs can be barking at them ten feet from shore and it doesn’t faze the birds, but I just have to open the door and they fly off. So, I generally spend an hour or two each week trying to sneak up on the herons. For HIDING I slowly worked my way toward him by darting from tree to tree whenever he lunged for fish. I started shooting at about fifty feet from behind the cover of a pine tree and the tall shoreline grasses. That’s why he appears to be floating in a field of green. Now I use a hunting blind to hide from the heron.
It was a great week of summer weather and I was rising early, driving around the back roads looking for wildlife, trying to catch the light before going in to work. I had discovered a nearby pond that often had waterfowl on it: ducks, cormorants, geese, etc. It was just a big, square, man-made pond that wasn’t very picturesque but I could get a clear shot of it from the road. My scouting paid off when I got these mallards drifting in and out of the morning mist just as the sun cleared the banks.
