Green Heron

 Earlier this month I returned  from my annual summer trip to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada. I love it up there and I'll have to post about birds seen there later. But by the end of the trip I was eager to get home, to see the family, and once again to sit with my morning coffee, watching my bird feeders and pond.

And my very first morning back I had a visit from a *green heron*. This was amazingly cool. Green herons seem to be a shy and secretive bird, and I see them rarely. If I see one a year that's a good year! And I can never predict when and where I might see them. I have never seen one at my pond before!

So having a visit from a green heron on my first day back was pretty special. Naturally I didn't have my camera handy, but he was perched for a while so I snuck off to get it, hoping he would hang around a bit longer.

And he did, and I managed to snap a few shots. I nearly witnessed a nature tragedy that would really have upset me though. As I watched suddenly one of my local red-shouldered hawks came screaming in for a landing, making a dead set at the green heron! Fortunately the green heron flew off with a squawk and made his escape. I'd have been super upset if my first-ever pond sighting of a green heron ended with him becoming lunch for the hawk.

Meanwhile the hawk landed on the branch vacated by the heron, and sat there for a bit, looking around with a haughty "I meant to do that" sort of look.

These pictures are not very good as I was shooting through a screen, so could not get the precise focus I needed. The green heron came back on and off for several days. In fact one day I even had a *pair* of green herons, my first-ever sighting of more than one at a single time.

But anytime I tried to sneak quietly out of the sunroom to get an unobstructed photo of them they took off as if the red-shouldered hawk was after them again, so I had to be content with these through-the-screen shots.

They haven't been around for a while now, I sure hope they come back.