That grey heron at Brackley’s St James Lake! He eluded me for a long time. Indeed I still have few photos of him, though I have to admit that I spend much less time at the lake these days.

All of my efforts to take a photo had, so far, proved reasonably fruitless. The excellent weather on this particular morning seemed like a good opportunity to take the camera for a walk and track down this elusive bird.

Well, this morning’s visit proved to be a bit more productive. First off, I grabbed a shot or two of the heron, until he flew away. At which point I realised that there were in fact two of them!

The (second) grey heron parked himself on a temporary fence, put in place to protect some vegetation. He and and I sat and stared at each other for a while. He clearly was aware of me.

Eventually his need for breakfast caused him to reach into the water and grab a fish, providing me with a great shot of the bird and a reflection (at the top of the page).

Of course the time waiting for the grey heron to move was not wasted. Although I missed the landing of a flock of Canada geese, a white goose just happened to fly by.

Footnote

This is a refresh of a post originally posted on 6 August 2013. I still like the photo, but the post was looking a bit dated!

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