Great Blue Heron with Catfish

This was my short shift at work for the week and as I left at just after 5 AM, I decided to wait at the lake for the sun to rise. Too dark at that time to take anything of any detail I thought, so I decided on the seated area which gives a good view of the full length of the lake and watched the beaver way in the distance feeding among the lily pads.
Sitting on the back of the seat with the hood of my jacket pulled up over my head (to avoid the mosquitoes) a great blue heron flew in front of me, landing behind the wall of reeds just to my left. I increased the ISO to 12800 on my Pentax K-S2 and fired off a few shots, not expecting much of anything, but with the high level of grain and the reeds blurring in the foreground, it gave an almost pastel effect:


The heron was looking my way and clearly saw some movement, but was unsure of what I was, so it slowly edged its way out from behind the reeds to get a better look:


Once I was identified, the heron promptly flew over to the other side of the lake to eat its catfish in peace.

One more photo of the great blue heron, taken later in the morning. Nothing particularly special about this photo, really poor detail, but there is something about the composition which I really like:


Copyright © wildlakeside.blogpot.com 2019 Scott Atkinson All Rights Reserved.

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