The egrets and green herons have gone south for the winter, but the Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) at Huntley Meadows Park continue to provide me with lots of photo opportunities.
Great Blue Herons present an unusual challenge to me—they are so long and wide when in flight that I actual have to remember to zoom out when photographing them in order to fit them in the frame. Like most wildlife photographers, I usually am complaining about needing more reach and spend most of my time shooting with the lens almost fully extended.
In this first shot, I was able to anticipate the action and captured the heron’s takeoff almost exactly the way you see it. In the second shot, however, I slightly misjudged the speed of the heron and almost cut off the wings and the feet. As you can see, the light was beautiful and I was happy to be able to capture a lot of beautiful wing details.
Before long migrating ducks should be arriving and you should be relieved from steady diet of heron photos with which I have been populating my postings recently.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Tough subject well shot.
I still enjoy the great blue herons and you got some nice ones here. Maybe it’s because the ones I see are so skittish there’s no fear of cutting off any part of them in the photo.
Great job Mike
I never get tired of seeing great blue herons. They’re fascinating creatures.
There is no number of heron shots that is ever too many; the action photos capturing take-off are stunning.
Wow!! Wonderful Mike
Great shots, Mike. You are really perfecting these BIF captures.
Thanks, Sue. It’s a bit easier when the bird is as big and slow as a Great Blue Heron. I’m hoping to have some success with the ducks, which should be migrating through in the coming months.
I definitely can’t get good duck shots. They fly way too fast.