Harn's Marsh

Harn's Marsh facilities consist of a dirt parking lot and a walking path through a fence that goes along one side of the large marsh. 

Most times when I've visited, I've seen two or three photographers shlepping top-end DSLR's on honking big tripods.  And I should mention their gargantuan telephoto lenses, the type that start at over $8,000 and can easily and quickly top $20,000.  I just proudly hand-held my old used 90 mm for which I paid $5.

I've mentioned before that most birds will poop just before taking flight. This Glossy Ibis obviously didn't get the memo. 

A couple of weeks ago, on an adventure with Jan, Joan spotted a pair of Sandhill Cranes with two young ones.  I was driving and there was really no safe place to stop, so I drove on.  I've been regretting that choice ever since because the young ones were just a little shorter than the parents, and they still didn't have their flight feathers: they were just big fluffy balls of down.

At the marsh, we saw such a pair with young ones, but this time, the young were much smaller, and the foursome wasn't going to stick around to model for us. They crossed the gully behind the walkway, upped the steep slope and vanished into the woods.

Note how well they hide themselves in plain view.

Next is an overview of a small part of the marsh with two snowy egrets flying away from me. All these pictures were made with the same 90 mm lens, so this is the only un-cropped picture in this blog entry.

The remaining shots are of a Tri Colour Heron, in full breeding plumage. He's sporting a very blue beak, white feathers at the back of his head, and rusty brown feathers on his back. The birders I was with had never see one with such a rich blue beak. These colours are straight from the camera, not enhanced.

The first shot has our heron with an inch long fish in his beak. The Tri-Colour heron has interesting fishing techniques: He jumps up, flies a few feet and lands quickly, dunking his head to resurface with the catch.  You have to catch a lot of fish this size to feed this large bird.  Mind you, they also catch bigger fish around the 5 - 6 inch size.

Cameras capture a very thin slice of time: sometimes this results in showing you something the eye is much too slow to see, like this face. 

The next shot is about a tenth of a second later, no face.

In the last two shots, our bird is stopping abruptly while making a fast turn to the right to show a different view.

I hope you enjoyed the marsh as much as I did.