After I'd spent the day in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on Saturday strategizing about optimizing the potential of cooperatives (I'm a board member at Just Food Co-op in Northfield, and this has been declared the United Nations International Year of the Cooperative), Dave met me there and we worked our way home up the Mississippi, spending Saturday night at a cute little B&B in Alma, Wisconsin..
In Reick's Lake Park in Alma, famed for being a migration hotspot for tundra swans in the fall, things were quiet except for a lone great blue heron standing in the water. Realizing I'd left my camera in the car, I was gone for a minute, and when I got back to the viewing area, where meanwhile Dave had been setting up our spotting scope, the heron had disappeared. Dave was sure it hadn't flown away, so we scanned the nearby reeds through the scope and there it was, beautifully camouflaged. I took this photo through the scope. Cool, eh?
I thought I'd show you three views of the same shot -- closely cropped at the top of this post (what a magnificent head!), a medium crop, and the uncropped view through the scope, below, showing just how well camouflaged the bird was. If we hadn't known approximately where to look, we probably would not have seen it.
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| Uncropped view - heron is well camouflaged |
3 comments:
They are so beautiful! Wonderful shots!
~cindy
Ces grands oiseaux sont étonnants. Leur vol assez lent est majestueux. Une fois posés, leur marche est souvent comique. Ils gardent une façon bien à eux de se camoufler pour mieux chasser qui les rend parfois difficiles à photographier. C'est pourquoi je te félicite pour cette belle prise photo.
Roger
Cindy and Roger - thank you for stopping by and for your comments. Herons are fascinating -- so primeval and beautiful and fierce and (often) solitary.
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