I was lucky today. Normally when I have tried to photograph Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias), I have had to do so at the maximum range of my telephoto zoom lens and even then would have to crop the image significantly. The result has been that my photos have not been as sharp or detailed as I would have liked.
Today was different. I was walking around the little ponds at Green Spring Gardens, a county-run historical park where I had previously taken photos of a green heron, when I startled a Great Blue Heron who had been perched in a tree. He flew off high into a tree across the pond and remained there as I followed him and tried to take some photos. I have not yet looked at those photos, but suspect that they are a little distorted, given that I was shooting almost straight up.
It started to drizzle a bit. When all of the other visitors left, the heron flew down from the tree and landed no more than 30 feet from me. He wandered along the water’s edge, periodically entering the water and staring intently at its surface, probably searching for something to eat. I cautiously approached him and he let me get with fifteen feet or so of him and I even circled around him trying to get a decent angle and background for a shot. How close was I? At times I could not use the full range of my 55-250mm lens if I wanted to capture his whole body.
Here is one of my initial favorite shots. I shot it with the lens extended to 194mm with settings of f9.0, 1/200 sec, ISO 400, and an exposure compensation of -.67. Other than a little sharpening and a little cropping, this is the way the image came out of the camera.
Indeed, I was lucky today to encounter an unusually cooperative Great Blue Heron.
Cooperative Great Blue Heron
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
When our herons are feeling lazy, they will let us get within 10-15 feet. We always make a point not to annoy them, just in case they want to take a low flight over us with those strong wings whapping about my ears.
It was hard to tell if it was laziness, indifference, or hunger that caused this heron to ignore me. In any case, the heron allowed me to get better photos than I have taken previously.
Patience pays off. Really nice photo, and I bet you have more good ones from this shoot.
I have a number of good ones that I’ll probably post as a group. I even have one in which the heron was walking right toward me–it’s strange to look down the beak of a heron. Eventually, though, the heron moved into an area in which I no longer had an unobstructed line of sight.
Always nice to get close – too bad it doesn’t happen more often.