Monday, October 30, 2023,

This is a Green Heron that I was lucky enough to find at the Marine Nature Study Area in Oceanside. I spotted this bird almost as soon as I had arrived. Two of my friends were discussing cameras and settings when I came across them. I could tell by their animated pointing at dials and such. They were deep into their conversation when I spotted this guy. This sort of thing happens more often than you might think. We are, all of us, nature lovers, but we are also camera geeks. In fact, for over a year, one of these guys and I had a sort of grunting “Hello” relationship. Then, one day, we discovered that both of us use the same software for our photos. We became fast friends after that. True story.

So, anyways, Bob and Dan were engaged in conversation. When I managed to gain their attention, (some waving was involved), I whispered, “Green Heron”, while pointing out the bird in question. Dan, who hears better than Bob, did some translation for me, and moments later, we were all taking pics of the Green Heron. Unfortunately for all three of us, we were shooting against the sun. I don’t know what Bob and Dan got, but the pic above was the best of the shots I took at that moment.

About an hour later, I came across another Green Heron. It is quite possible that this was the very same Green Heron. It’s hard to say. As it turns out, birds have wings and can fly. Birders claim that they love that, but I’ve yet to meet the birder who hasn’t been frustrated by that very basic fact. For instance, how do these birders, who are huge on counting, know that their counts on any particular species are accurate? I mean, how do they know that a bird they saw at the beginning of their walk isn’t one they saw later on? I suspect there’s a great deal of guesswork involved.  🙂   JK

JK