A Great Blue Heron circles the marsh before landing to feed their chicks.

Great Blue Heron in Flight 

As the sun began to light the warm morning sky, one of the Beavers who maintains this large wetland began her swimming laps and tail slaps around the lagoon outside her lodge. She performs this behavior whenever I see her. This photograph is of her back feet as she changes direction like an olympic swimmer. Sometimes she stops and just drifts in front of me for several minutes seeming to fall asleep before continuing on. Beavers will perform tail slaps as an alerting behavior but this beaver in particular seems to be playing and that is what draws me to this image.

The engineer takes a bow

A first baby Great Blue Heron chick looks on as her parents fend off an aggressive display by a neighboring male heron. Two more chicks would hatch in the next 24 hours.

School of Hard Knocks

The Bullfrog, the Leach and the Mosquito.

Things Fall Apart...

A Wood Swallow buzzes the tower. The Great Blue Heron nest sits atop a 30 foot snag in a Beaver built wetland. There are several heron nests dotting the landscape here. The swallows have nests inside this same dead tree. Some of the nesting holes can be seen in this image and swallows often swarm the area catching insects and feeding their young. I have only seen this behavior once in the 6 months of daily observation. Occasionally, the Swallows will harass the Herons as they incubate their eggs in a risky game of ‘you can’t catch me’. This diving lasted more than one hour with the heron very nearly catching a swallow several times.

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Vincent Chiu

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