THE HUNT CONTINUES

Some of you know that I'm in search of the elusive blue heron. Yes, despite their size, they are elusive. And they're quick.

I fell in love with these creatures when I lived in the Mojave desert. I'd go on morning walks around a man made pond that just breathed life. Cranes and rabbits and coyotes. It was an interesting eco system. A blue heron nested in the marshes of the pond. I'd see it come and go overhead. I knew where it nested by its activities, but never saw the nest.

One morning I'm walking around, on my second lap of the ¾ mile track. Shadows pass above and I see her up in the sky circling the pond with a baby heron in tow. She just circled and circled and never quite made her way to her nest. I found it a bit odd, but I figured maybe it was a baby flying lesson. Until I rounded the curve.

There in front of me stood a pack of seven, yes, count em, seven coyotes. A bit nerve racking. I was used to seeing coyotes around the pond. They traveled in packs of two to three, usually young pups looking for rabbits. When I approached them, they'd wander about 20-30 feet into the desert, sit, yawn, wait for me to pass, then make their way back to the perimeter of the pond.

Not so with this new pack. There was an older coyote who you just knew by looking was the leader of this pack and it's the first and only time a coyote looked me in the eyes. A bit creepy, especially when you're used to them walking away. This coyote wasn't budging.

Following proper coyote safety protocol, I reached down for the nearest stone (I might have picked up about three of them). Coyote safety protocol states that you toss stones or rocks toward the coyote to chase them off. You don't throw them at the coyote, no reason to make them mad (especially when there's a pack of seven), you throw them in the direction of the coyote.

Well, with this leader looking at me, I seriously doubted it was going to be scared off by a stone or two. So I took the lessons learned from the young coyote pups, walked out into the desert about 20-30 feet making a wide berth around the pack and cut my walk short that day. By the time I passed them, the blue heron and her baby were gone.

Back in those days I wasn't shooting. But now that I am, I've been on the hunt for the perfect blue heron photo. The perfect elusive blue heron photo. Usually they're flying by too fast for me to raise the camera and focus or they're too far in the distance and I have the wrong lens on the body.

I go out and search every now and then. This past week I devoted some time to the search. I went to Government Island, scanning the shores through the zoom. As I was doing so, I noticed this tree hanging over the water and decided to take a shot. As I was doing so, this big, blue bird soared right through the shot. And my thought - "Oh my god, that's a blue heron!". I followed it with my camera, knowing the shots would be out of focus, but at that point, I didn't care. I was just excited that the elusive blue heron had found me.

The next morning I had some time to kill between meetings. While most of my business associates kill time in Wi-Fi hot spots with their computers, I kill time walking around with my camera. So I went to the wetlands area of the Canal Walk in hopes of finding the elusive blue heron. No luck, but I did have a fun time photographing this shy little cardinal. Really, no better way to kill time.

So my friends, the hunt continues. I've learned of new locations to scout.