![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/great-blue-heron-0727-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"great-blue-heron-0727-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nI’m sure this photo from yesterday morning will quickly become one of my favorite shots of a Great Blue Heron in flight. I actually managed to get a long series of them, some of which I like as well or even better than this one.<\/p>\n
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1\/2000, f\/6.3. ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Yesterday morning at Bear River MBR I was waiting mostly for Black-crowned Night Herons to fly in to one of their favorite roosting spots when this Great Blue Heron unexpectedly came skimming over the phragmites.<\/p>\n I love this result with the heron at just about the ideal flight angle to me, the bird well lit against the darker background that includes patches of wispy whitish-gray and especially with ‘his’ wingtips skimming over the attractive phrag plumes at the bottom of the frame. I think those phrags, with their color almost perfectly matching the color of his bill and some of the plumage patches on the heron, pull the bird and the phrags together and anchor the heron in flight exceptionally well.<\/p>\n I was even more pleased when I arrived home and realized I had an entire long series of photos of this bird skimming over the phrags, with some showing him banking at an angle that beautifully lights up all of his dorsal surfaces and even highlights some of his prehistoric-looking traits..<\/p>\n But the rest of my day yesterday was taken up by some of the vagaries of life that take precedent so I didn’t have time or opportunity to process the entire series for today’s post. It isn’t my intention to make this photo a ‘teaser’ but I suppose a case can be made that it’s exactly that. So be it.<\/p>\n I’m sure I’ll be posting the rest of the series soon.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Note:<\/em><\/p>\n Yesterday was a good day for birds at the refuge but one of the highlights of my morning was visiting with bird photographer James Stevens again. I’d only met him once before, about two years ago and that was out in the middle of nowhere in Montana’s Centennial Valley. I was camping alone and my pickup was just about out of gas with me about 40 miles from the nearest gas station. I had 13 gallons of extra gas (weighing almost 100 lbs.) in a container that, with my bad back, I couldn’t lift to the top of the tool box in the back of my pickup so it would gravity feed to my gas tank without seriously injuring my back. <\/em><\/p>\n I was in a helluva fix, having gas that I couldn’t use.<\/em><\/p>\n But perfect stranger James Stevens came to my rescue and lifted the container for me, saving my bacon and my back. We jawboned for quite a while and I quickly discovered he wasn’t only a good Samaritan, he was an incredibly nice guy. I was delighted to see him again yesterday.<\/em><\/p>\n I actually wrote about the incident in a blog post titled “Camping Trip Report – The Good, The Bad And The Ugly<\/a><\/span><\/span>” in June two years ago. If you’re interested it’s under the subheading “The Good”.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m sure this photo from yesterday morning will quickly become one of my favorite shots of a Great Blue Heron in flight. I actually managed to get a long series of them, some of which I like as well or even better than this one.<\/p>\n