great blue heron, Victoria B.C., May 2013, by John Fleck

My friend Judy Liddell posted a lovely picture of a Rio Grande bosque great blue heron on her Facebook page yesterday, to which I had this comment:

I have a lot of birds for which I say “That’s my favorite bird!” But I think the great blue heron may really be my favorite, the first bird I ever got curious enough to pull out the old family bird book and figure out what it was. It was soon after Lissa and I got married, and we were in a campground on the lower Colorado River among all the RV snowbird set, and the heron was sitting on a snag in the river – seeming so regal and oblivious to the petty humans with their toys and short-term thinking. Of course that’s anthropomorphizing, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it.