Heron Love

A narrow roadway crosses a span of water flanked by rocks and boulders and trees and stumps. The waterway is also narrow. Fed by a stream, the waterway gradually widens before pouring into the Tennessee River. Here, birds are protected, fishes are plentiful in the shallows and this juvenile great blue heron takes advantage. If you click on the first photo to enlarge it you can make out a black feather in its beak, for what purpose I can only imagine.

The camera loves the subject but the heron grows nervous and soon flies off seeking privacy.

The Heron

The heron stands in water where the swamp
Has deepened to the blackness of a pool,
Or balances with one leg on a hump
Of marsh grass heaped above a musk-rat hole.

He walks the shallow with an antic grace.
The great feet break the ridges of the sand,
The long eye notes the minnow's hiding place.
His beak is quicker than a human hand.

He jerks a frog across his bony lip,
Then points his heavy bill above the wood.
The wide wings flap but once to lift him up.
A single ripple starts from where he stood.


--Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)