Hello Green Heron!
Recently I went to the North Meadows in Deerfield hoping to see my first green heron of the season. The morning started out with lots of low clouds and fog.
The forecast said it would burn off so I was very hopeful for some sunshine. I was really hoping the dirt farm field roads wouldn’t be too muddy from all of the rain we had the previous 2 days. The roads were in better shape than I thought they would be so I was quite happy. When I arrived at the two ponds - they are on either side of the first road leading into the fields - I saw a blue heron way in the distance but it was too cloudy/foggy to get his photo. I then decided to walk around in the fields and hope that the clouds would lift and then make my way back to the ponds to try again.
The clouds and fog did burn off so I headed back over to the ponds as the light was getting great. This gorgeous little Phoebe flew right past me and landed on this beautiful post…
As I approached the ponds I went very slowly - in my experience green herons are easy to flush. I looked first towards the south pond - no luck. I then went a few steps more to look towards the north pond…. guess who was flying right into the perfect light and then landed on a great log - a green heron!!! :).
I am fairly confident in saying this is a male - there was nothing dull about these colors! I could not believe my luck…. He was definitely on the move and in hunting mode so I immediately starting firing away! All of the green heron shots in this post are over a matter of seconds… he was not fooling around!!
And before there was time for a blink of an eye he took off heading towards the south pond- wow!
He was on the move over there too!
As he was getting ready to land on this log he put the brakes on and turned sharply to the right because there was a turtle right where he had wanted to land!!
He missed the turtle and immediately walked up the log….
And then he flew off… amazing!
Thank you green heron!! What a thrill!