Late last week, I visited the nearby Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias). You might remember some of my posts from the rookery last year. Since then, I’ve talked to the landowner and received permission to trim a few limbs out of the trees there, to gain a better view of the nests. So, over the winter, I worked on the trees, trimming back some of the limbs that had obstructed good views last year. Last week, I stopped by and put up 2 temporary photo blinds, one in front of 2 different nests, in 2 different trees. I also noticed that it seems most of the nests now have heron chicks in them! So while I was there, I set up my tripod and camera and took a few photos and even a short video. Here is the scene I saw:

The first couple of shots were taken when the chicks noticed movement above the nest (actually, above the entire tree). I think they were waiting for one of the parents to arrive with dinner, but instead, it was just a Turkey Vulture flying over the rookery! If you look closely, you can see there are 3 chicks in this nest:

And in this third image, one of the chicks seems ready to try to fly … but I think it will be quite difficult with his wings! Notice that it looks like feathers are starting to grow, but still lots of down.

And here is a link to a short video of this nest of chicks I captured with my Canon 7D camera:

Great Blue Heron Rookery video

The temperature was in the 80′s on that day and the chicks seemed to be ventilating a lot to help control their internal temperatures.

Tomorrow I’ll post either some new material from my recent south Texas trip (I think you’ll enjoy some of the upcoming images!) or possibly some new material from my first day with Adam Jack (@wildobs) who will be shooting beside me for the next 3 days!