After a considerable amount of conservation construction at my local marsh, one wooded area is now flooded. It is cool and shaded and offered me respite from the hot sun on a recent summer afternoon. Apparently a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) had the same idea and I inadvertently flushed him from his calm repose.
In many ways, this is more of a landscape shot than a wildlife one, which is unusual for me. Normally I try to zoom in really close to the action, but at that moment I was simply enjoying the beautiful light that was coming into this scene. Besides, I had my 100mm macro lens on my camera, so zooming was not an option.
I really like the way the trees turned out in the image—it’s hard to explain why. In the foreground, you can see what I believe is some of the local beavers’ efforts. Last fall, the beavers felled a number of trees in this area and I wonder if they are the ones that stripped the bark off of part of one of the trees.
Click on the image if you want to see a higher resolution view of this shot.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Beautiful scene. I love to watch birds like that walk in the water.
It is a beautiful picture. Startling the heron made it even better.
Shots in or through forests are not as easy to get as we would imagine. I like it.
Hey great find…and ya got the shot!