High Noon with a Great Blue Heron

Dateline Thursday, July 14, 2011, 12PM.

Just back from the Adirondacks, I set out for Innisfree Garden with my camera, too-short telephoto zoom lens, and binoculars, a bottle of water, floppy hat, and all-important three-legged folding stool ready to be stashed in the pockets of my photog vest.  I figured, with my luck of late, the camera would stay slung over my shoulder and the stool stashed, but I consoled myself that Innisfree is always a nice place for a walk.

I had a little trouble getting out of the house that morning.  What caused the delay, I don’t recall, but likely nonessential errands that seemed essential at the time.  So, as is my wont, I arrived at Innisfree on a beautiful day at high noon.  Not exactly, so the lore goes, the best time for watching, let alone photographing, birds.

The parking lot was beginning to fill up.  It’s a small lot, but I knew this would decrease my chances.  It seems folks actually like to talk as they walk, scattering the birds before them, or sit in chairs and talk near where birds are active.  They act as if this were a pretty garden, open to the public, and not untouched wilderness where a solitary hiker hiked in deep and won the right to set up a solitary camp.

Self, I said, the thing is, you’re not a solitary hiker off in the wilderness, but just one of many visitors driving in and parking, with four dollars in hand to pay the entry fee.  Self, I said, if you’d set aside those errands you simply had to run, you could have been here when the gates opened and had the garden to yourself a while.  So, I said, give it a rest, and enjoy a nice walk on a beautiful day.

My wise counsel to Self taken, I walked downhill to join the path around the lake.  At the bottom of the hill, I stopped to take in the view and admire the waterlilies that had come into flower.

And lo, I saw before me that great evader of my photographic efforts:  a great blue heron stalking fish.  That’s it, I said to Self.  Today, you’re not walking anywhere unless the heron makes you.  Today, you’re going to get a clear, clean photograph of it in flight, or at the very least, catching a fish.

The heron was far out in the water, too far for my too-short lens.  But I nonetheless pulled my three-legged stool from my back pocket, remembered to pull the water bottle out so I didn’t sit on it, got my camera out, too-short lens attached, took off the lens cap (this often gets forgotten), set it for repeating shots, and sat.

And sat.  And sat.

Do you know how long a heron can stand immobile when it’s intent on a meal?  They’re like those gold-painted mimes you sometimes see down in the New York City subways.  They can stand still for a long, long time.  I sat there, probably fifteen minutes—nothing for the record books, and certainly not for the bird watching record books—but far more than I usually invest in a single go, and that heron did not move.  Well, maybe a step or two, maybe a little craning of the neck or tilt of the head, but that was all.

Then, behind me, a strolling couple stopped and asked me, “Oooh, is that a stork?  Oh, I don’t know anything about birds.”  I put my camera down and turned their way for the split second it took to muster, “It’s a great blue heron.”  In that moment, the heron dove into the water.  “Oh, look, it’s caught a fish!” they said.  I didn’t see it of course, because I'd turned my head.

They strolled on, the heron entirely forgotten.  I censored my thoughts about this interaction and turned my focus back to my bird.

Overhead, I noticed a lot of fluttering in the trees.  I kept my camera up, one eye on that heron, but these birds were really close . . . and they were cedar waxwings, with the pretty markings on their wing and tail.  They were so close that I simply had to take some photographs.

This, of course, was the heron’s cue to fly off.  That’s it, I thought.  Party's over.  I gathered up my water bottle and folded my stool.

But the heron landed, not far away, and closer to the edge of the lake.  I was off on the spot, got as close to the shore as I could without falling in, and set myself up again.  This time, I thought, I would pretend I was a professional Audubon photographer, so focused on my quarry I couldn’t possibly respond should I be asked (as I was the next time I missed a shot of the heron diving for food):  “Is it catching fish?  What do they eat?”

Of course, I couldn’t resist responding with the single fact I knew.  “Well, they eat frogs, too.  But that one went down too smoothly.  Must have been a fish.” “Eeeww,” they said, and off they walked.  (I filed that away as a good conversation-stopping technique.)

I followed that heron around the lake, aiming my camera at its eye, trying to keep it in focus as it flew, and, of course, taking dozens of shots of it standing still.  Finally, inevitably, it flew entirely out of photographic reach.

Ah, the great blue heron.  Perhaps not rare, but still magnificent:  spectacularly prehistoric, yet at the same time intensely modern, as if fashioned by some combination of Picasso and Modigliani.

And every now and then I get a lucky shot.