But every now and then, something comes into my view that is so unfamiliar, so seemingly out of place, that I am disoriented. Actually, I love the mental sensation when this happens.

Yesterday I saw a bird alight on a branch. I don’t even recall how I managed to capture this with my camera. The realization that I was seeing something unusual occured in a nano-second. It wasn’t till I was home and uploaded the shots to my computer that I saw that I actually had a photo of whatever-it-was that I saw.

I think I was about 150 feet from the bird. So the photo above is a lucky shot.

Once the bird landed, a summer breeze kept branches moving – obscuring it from my lens’ view. But I kept shooting, catching glimpses of it when the air current moved the leaves and branches in just the right way to allow me to see some of the bird’s neck and head. As I took these pictures, I had no idea what I was seeing. I joked later that I thought I had seen the Froot Loops bird. And when I downloaded the photos and saw them on the computer screen, the joke didn’t seem so far-fetched!
Now, after a bit of research, I think I can suggest that this bird, which was about eighteen inches tall, is a Great Blue Heron fledgling! I am so excited! If you’ve followed this blog, you know my initial distain for this predatory bird, then my love/hate phase with it, and now that I marvel at its beauty, which is prehistorically bizarre while also being fluid and elegant. To my eye, it’s a pretty pterodactyl. To see this bird lift off and get its huge body in the air never ceases to amaze me.

Welcome to the pond, little big one!