One Golden Morning

Saturday morning's offering was a Great Blue Heron, the first visitor of the season observed standing thoughtfully on a fallen log at the edge of the beaver pond around nightfall. There was no tripod employed and no tricks used that evening, but the Old Wild Mother and the Norns were kind, and the telephoto lens was already mounted on the camera when I encountered the heron. I think it was a female, although it is almost impossible to differentiate between female and male herons, either standing majestically in one's beaver pond or flapping elegantly overhead in flight with their long legs trailing behind them. I didn't want to disturb my pensive visitor and didn't use the flash on the camera, reluctant to intrude on what was a perfect (and seemingly timeless) moment by the beaver pond at dusk in spring.

There's a small morale or lesson to this encounter with the heron - last year I prowled my beaver ponds and nearby lakes endlessly in the quest for a reasonably good heron picture, achieving only a single gracefully silhouetted image in the golden shallows of Dalhousie Lake one fine summer night.

This year, I resolved to let go of the almost obsessive desire to photograph a Geat Blue, to cultivate patience and watchfulness and "just let things be". I resolved to make my visits to the beaver pond and the woods without any expectations whatsoever and to accept gratefully whoever and whatever presented itself to me there. Lo and behold, there was a heron there on the shore Friday, and she was magnificent in every way. Any words about her tucked into yesterday's post would have been inadequate - they would also have been superfluous, redundant and completely "over the top".

Yesterday there were no herons to be seen, but there were geese in profusion, and the air around the Clyde river was full of their blissful honking and splashing. "We're back", they sang, "we're back, we're back, we're back!"